Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

One of the questions we discussed is, “How much capital should a startup raise?” ” Fred & I are both in agreement that there is a tension between capital constraints and creativity. Fred is generous with his time and advice and I hope has shaped a generation of VCs for the better. VC investing is hard work.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

SPACs are publicly traded “shell companies” that raise capital in an IPO process and then use that capital to merge with a privately held business. For most of my career as a VC, the IPO has been the holy grail. I don’t take as much offense to this situation as others in the VC business have.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 31, 2020

I edited hundreds of stories in 2020, so choosing my favorites would be an exercise in futility. “Enterprise expenditure on custom software is on track to double from $250 billion in 2015 to $500 billion in 2020,” so we’ll definitely be diving deeper into this topic in the coming months. David Eichler, TCV.

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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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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Italy’s ecosystem for tech venture capital and startups has been in development for years and has made decent strides in the last decade. 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.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 22, 2021

Just a month into 2021, Egyptian fintech startup Cassbana raised a $1 million pre-seed investment led by VC firm Disruptech in a bid to drive expansion within the country. Andreata Muforo is a partner at TLcom Capital, a pan-African early-stage VC firm. So, in essence, they tend to raise more capital. ” . .

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 19, 2021

Despite a pandemic that sparked a global recession, 2020 was still a record year for venture capital investments into American startups. According to data shared by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association, investors poured $156.2 venture capital market in 2020 was hot, it was not newly so.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

But in recent years, corporate docs are being drawn up in English to facilitate communication both inside Switzerland’s various language regions and foreign capital, and investment documentation is modeled after the U.S. Today, pitch competitions, incubators, accelerators, VCs and angel groups proliferate. Andreas Iten , partner, F10.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Besides, there were a limited number of places where I could do my job in venture capital anyway—and while I might be a go to for a pitch from super early stage pre-seed and seed founders looking for quick answers and decisive term sheets in New York City, the reality is that I would be pretty far down the list in the Valley. Plenty of bros.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

The venture capital scene in Africa has consistently grown, with an influx of capital from local and international investors reaching unprecedented heights in recent years. It was expected that these figures would increase in 2020. For 2020, the number dropped to $1.43 However, that figure isn’t the only yardstick.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 20, 2020

Meanwhile, few spaces were frothier in 2016 than virtual reality, but most VCs who gambled on VR following Facebook’s Oculus acquisition failed to strike it rich. Brayton Williams, Boost VC. Hardware is so capital intensive and this entire industry is dependent on the big players continuing to invest in hardware innovation.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 20, 2021

The fourth quarter of 2020 was as busy as you imagined, with super late-stage startups reaching new valuation thresholds at a record pace, and total venture capital funding in the United States recording its second-best result of all time. First, we want to how unicorns performed in Q4 2020.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 17, 2020

Then I found out that the creators of this new game had received venture capital funding and were going to turn it into a business. It comes with the territory in VC. USV TEAM POSTS: Matt Cynamon — Aug 13, 2020 A Quick Update On Hiring Albert Wenger — Aug 13, 2020 Marxism Remains a Dangerous Idea.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2021

As I wrote yesterday , I think the trends that were accelerated in 2020 will not reverse in 2021, although the slope of the adoption curves will likely flatten a fair bit. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet.

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Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

— samir kaji (@Samirkaji) April 7, 2020 To guide startups through the confusion, Dreamit interviewed three leaders helping startups secure emergency funding from different perspectives as bankers, attorneys, and investors. The information on this page was updated on April 6th, 2020. Last Friday was anything but orderly.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2020

It’s 2020. So, I am starting out 2020 in an optimistic mood and here are some predictions for the decade that we are now in. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

After years of rosy projections, growth and investor enthusiasm, a new report from PitchBook shows that VC activity in the AI sector declined precipitously over the past few months. As VC deal value and deal count in AI startups reach their lowest levels since Q4 2020, it’s not just investors that are pulling back.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

The venture capital market appears to be getting later, larger and more expensive. But for smaller players, is the shift toward bigger, more mature rounds undercutting their ability to attract capital and reach scale? Late-stage deals made Q3 2020 a standout VC quarter for US-based startups. More big, and more late.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 8, 2020

When the pandemic started, the conventional wisdom was that the capital markets would take a beating, including the venture capital market for startup capital. The second quarter of 2020 is now behind us and we will see the data on it soon. First, venture capital firms raise funds and it is our job to put them to work.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 5, 2021

Over the next few weeks, the venture capital industry will compile and release data concerning its Q4 2020 performance, capping a year that saw the world of private capital freeze , thaw and burn. For our look at the third-quarter fintech VC market, head here.). So it was too interesting to not unpack.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Since the beginning of modern venture capital investing — a relatively nascent asset class — the industry has been biased toward funding what it knows best: founders with familiar demographics (white, male) in familiar geographies (Silicon Valley).

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 25, 2021

Microtraction , an early-stage venture capital firm based in Lagos, Nigeria, saw funding nearly quadruple for its portfolio. 2019 saw the local VC firm invest in six companies. Of the total investments raised in 2019 and 2020, 54gene contributed more than half of those numbers by raising $4.5

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500

JUNE 9, 2020

Supply chains have been disrupted, businesses have had to close or operate at limited capacity for months, and even founders have had to expand their fundraising timeframes as we saw in our 2020 Female Founders Data Report. As a VC firm, we’ve had to adapt many aspects of our business as well.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Sopoong , a social impact-focused VC, intends to support environmentally minded tech founders in South Korea and Southeast Asia, while building a bridge between Korean conglomerates and startups in the sector. Korean VC Sopoong closes $8M fund for startups focused on environmental impact by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch.

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TechCrunch

MAY 28, 2022

.” The document reads like a follow-up course to its infamously ill-timed “Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020” memo of March 2020. The capital provider blames capital itself — capitalism, huh? The firm says that “cheap capital is not coming to the rescue” at this moment:

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 21, 2020

While it is nice to have these “rights”, the need for this letter actually has very little to do with how venture capital firms want to work with a portfolio company. The existence of these letters has everything to do with where the venture capital firms get their funds from.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2020

When I started leading deals at First Round Capital, I sourced investments in 8 companies. My largest investor was a financial firm that invested in my prior funds to get into the VC business—and in the six years since they first invested, they had built out a team and a strategy that no longer involved doing much seed.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

Matt and many members of his leadership team got the band back together early this year and started a new company called Bolster in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank and the early-stage VC firm High Alpha. Bolster also will allow venture capital firms and startup investors to participate in its platform as super users.

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StartupNation

OCTOBER 3, 2021

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and nationwide protests, venture capital firms are making newfound commitments to invest in, or at least evaluate, potential investments that are led by diverse founders. Originally published July 2020. So, what exactly do those action steps look like? Let’s take a deeper look. Sourcing deals.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 26, 2021

Despite the pandemic, 2020 saw $158 million invested into 108 deals, representing the third year in a row of over $100 million in investment in startups. According to a PwC report, 2020 was also the third year of more than 20% year-over-year growth in dollars invested. This boost in access to capital can be attributed to a few things.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Regular readers of The Exchange will recall that we last dug into overall wellness venture capital investment in August , noting that it was mental health startups inside the vertical that were seeing the most impressive results. million in new capital to “grow its remote therapy service for teens and young adults,” per GeekWire.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

I saw this tweet in my feed yesterday and read the New Yorker piece when I woke up this morning: @fdestin @MacConwell @HarryStebbings any VC 'fairy godfathers of success' viewpoints? "Building " #startups @fredwilson blog fodder [link] — Claudia Lamb (@cloudylamb) November 23, 2020. Here’s what I think.

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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. 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.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

These projects need investment capital and community involvement/buy-in to get to market and begin the process of decentralization. I am a big fan of “safe harbors”and wrote a bit a few years ago about why I like them so much and why a crypto safe harbor is such a needed and good idea.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital. During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. Startups should know how VCs work. startup) per month.

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TechCrunch

JUNE 10, 2022

Women in VC have caught the entrepreneurial bug. Sydney Thomas told Natasha Mascarenhas last week that she was leaving Precursor to capitalize on an opportunity she couldn’t ignore either. So she found a partner, Joanna Drake, and launched Magnify Ventures in 2020.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 2, 2020

One of the many things that venture capital has taught me is the value of the long buy. There is a special place in the venture capital landscape where this sort of investing is possible and practiced, and that is the traditional early-stage venture capital fund. Seed funds tend to get tapped out after two or three rounds.

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