Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

One of the things that founders have the most angst about is whom they should have on their board and at what stage of the business. This is smart because amazing board members can be transformative with important advice and access and can also help attract other great board members (and team members).

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 5, 2014

About seven years ago, I wrote a post on breaking into venture capital and I continue to point the five or six people a week who ask me how to break into venture. Like lefties out of the bullpen, VC firms now have recruiting partners, pr and marketing experts, technologists-in-residents--and USV even has an on board activist.

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David Teten VC

JUNE 9, 2021

Would you like to work with private equity and venture capital funds? There are relatively few jobs directly inside private equity and venture capital funds, and those jobs are highly competitive. Venture capitalists often come from an operating background. Venture Capital. Asian Venture Capital Journal (free trial).

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

After years of trying to persuade Kara Nortman to become a partner at Upfront Ventures I can officially announce now that she’s joined us effective immediately. Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). Kara has worked in finance in Boston, NYC and Silicon Valley. She is a coach and mentor to team members.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

In New York, for instance, there are now venture funds with a West Coast mentality and firms with an East Coast mentality; the same is true for firms in San Francisco. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? The biggest question for a venture firm is whether LPs will fail to make capital calls in a crisis. “It

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

One area I’ve had much discussion with the companies in which I’ve invested in is bringing on board an operationally focused CFO. I think Ophir would agree that the business was transformed after we brought on board Phil Schraeder at the CFO (and later promoted to COO). And board confidence matters in growing companies.

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American Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 20, 2024

Embedded finance infrastructure makes financing decisions based on real-time data. Fintech startup Parafin innovatively tackles this challenge through its embedded finance infrastructure used by partners such as DoorDash, Amazon, and others. Incumbent methods systematically bias against women- and minority-owned businesses.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 27, 2014

I remember back in the Union Square Ventures days when we had an internal debate over the price of the first round of Indeed. No wonder people are questioning where the boards of these companies were. No one from the firm leading the deal will join the board. That might be a board seat, or at least an observer right.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 4, 2021

Zeni , a Palo Alto fintech company providing real-time financial services data to venture-backed startups, raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital. As part of the investment, Ravi Adusumalli, founder and managing partner at Elevation Capital, will join Zeni’s board. million in a combined seed and Series A round.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 6, 2020

Many entrepreneurs are reliant on outside funding, whether angel investors, venture capitalists or strategic investors , to keep the venture going. It’s important to enlist the ideas of others that are invested in your venture. A startup is not a lone adventure. Join a CEO peer group. Deal with the reality of the situation.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2022

I’m a straight white dude who grew up in NYC and worked in finance. What’s that investor going to be like in a board meeting when you as a female founder need their support or worse, actually their vote? Eighteen percent of $330 billion translates to $59 billion, or 25% of all venture transactions (e.g., Highly doubtful.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

Venture capitalists have raised increasing amounts of money from their investors (LPs) every year. We’ve had an explosion of alternate sources of financing from crowd-sourcing, angels, accelerators, incubators, corporates, corporate incubators. Make sure your board challenges you enough about long-term vision & innovation.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

They often ask whether they have to move to SF, NY or LA to get financed. ” I’m trying to get a feel for their commitment to local community versus being in a place where financing is easiest. If you don’t live in a major VC zone, I have some tips for how to make it easier to raise Venture Capital.

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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. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” I had a chance to discuss AngelList Syndicates with Naval at Michael Kim’s Cendana LP/VC conference on a panel with Naval, Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures) and Mike Brown, Jr.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. I think this is a combination of being realists as venture capitalists that outsized returns in our funds must come from taking on bigger, more impactful projects that can move markets.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

Venture backed companies have a strange relationship to positive cashflow. Because they have financial backers who can and do finance losses, they tend to operate in the red for a long time. If you have positive cashflow, you can borrow against it to purchase other companies or finance capital requirements.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

Changes in the Software World & in Venture Capital. That didn’t make them bad – it just didn’t make them efficient at making rapid decisions of whether to fund a startup or not and the terms on which they would fund were typically not “market” for a startup company that would become venture backed one day.

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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 30, 2025

Bank accounts are the nucleus of business finance, said Akhund. This deep integration streamlines operations and provides business owners with greater visibility and control over their finances. In conjunction with the funding, Mercury also announced an expansion of its board of directors, including the appointment of four new members.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). We led an investment round in a company a while ago in which we wrote a seven-figure check and have taken a board seat.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2013

I’m super proud to announce that DataSift has just completed a $42 million financing round coming at the end of a year where its revenue grew several hundred percent year-over-year. We co-led the A-round with IA Ventures. In the B round we invested the maximum amount we could alongside the lead – Scale Venture Partners.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. She found non-traditional financing. Without this money she wouldn’t have been able to finance operations. I’m told she just signed with one who will be on-boarded soon. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. She put all of her savings into her company.

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peer-to-peer entrepreneurs startup entrepreneurship 363

TechCrunch

JUNE 29, 2022

That’s the gap that revenue-based financing platforms like GetVantage want to fill. The Mumbai-based startup announced today that it has raised $36 million in equity and debt led by Varanium Nexgen Fintech Fund, DMI Sparkle Fund, along with returning investors Chiratae Ventures and Dream Incubator Japan.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures. We we backed Team Grove’s mission (Kevin sourced the deal and joined the board) and just encouraged the team not to ramp up costs like many contemporary startups because we’re going to play the long game. ” Enter Grove.

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Dream It

MAY 4, 2021

Valuation is not set by you, your team, your investors, or your board. We then back out the maximum post-money valuation to deliver a venture-level return. I have co-founded several companies and served on many boards. I have been through my share of down rounds and ugly financings. Valuation is part art, part science.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

I’ve sat on ad tech boards with board members who clearly knew little about impressions, fill rates, CTRs, RTB, eCPMs or the difficulties & opportunities of embedded mobile SDKs vs. HTML5. And so is venture capital. Industry or Operating Experience? Now you’re talking. Commitment. Startups are hard.

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American Entrepreneurship

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Strategic investment fund BankTech Ventures invests in companies that are developing innovative technologies that enhance the ability of community banks to serve their customers. In addition to drawing together key leaders from community banking, bank technology and fintech to launch the Fund, over 100 bank limited partners are now on board.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2013

Because the videos show exactly what life would be like if a young Elon Musk came to pitch VCs today and said I want to transform P2P finance, get people driving electric cars and send a man to mars in our lifetime. The first time I met Andy Dunn he was working for the venture capital firm Maveron. They are also sad. by Dorrian Porter.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 30, 2023

Marqeta has agreed to acquire two-year-old fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $223 million in cash, marking the first acquisition in the publicly-traded company’s 13-year history. Founded in early 2021 by Randy Fernando and Andrew Dust, New York-based Power Finance announced last September that it had raised $16.1

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 13, 2022

Coming out of stealth today with $150 million in debt financing and $11 million in seed funding, Arc is building what it describes as “a community of premium software companies” that gives SaaS startups a way to borrow, save and spend “all on a single tech platform.”

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. Almost no financings, many VCs and tech startups cratered for the second time in less than a decade following the dot com bursting. What happened?

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

He came to work in our offices at Upfront Ventures as an EIR and immediately began building software to improve how storage was picked up, photographed, scanned and routed to a warehouse. If I could close with some advice for startups and boards …. Sam’s enthusiasm was infectious and his plans were bold. Startups are like families.

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innovation startup board leadership 286

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 7, 2013

Some financing rounds seem to go really fast. Venture Capital & Technology' Others drag on for months and months. The problem with dragging it on is twofold--. a) The entrepreneur is distracted from doing what they need to do--i.e. running the business. Tell me how I''m being unreasonable.

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TechCrunch

JULY 6, 2022

Raising venture capital is rarely an easy lift for startups, but 2022 is turning out to be a more challenging year than we’ve seen for some time. As venture capital continues its slowdown after an aggressive 2020 and record-breaking 2021 , it’s clear that early-stage founders looking for their first dollars will require a new approach.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

We’ve had two companies where we had to bridge finance them several times before they eventually IPO’d We had a portfolio company turn-down a $350 million acquisition because they wanted at least $400 million. If you’re a seed fund that takes 5–10% ownership and doesn’t take board seats you might have 50, 100 or even 200 investments.

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Dream It

AUGUST 6, 2020

Today, the company announced a $10M Series A financing round led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and digital health fund Heal Capital , with participation from existing investors Karma Ventures, Inovo Venture Partners, and Dreamit Ventures.

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Source Link

JANUARY 29, 2022

Your local Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which can provide assistance with business planning, access to financing, counseling services and classes. The conversation introduced a new framework for inclusive community development that incorporates cultural understanding, talent development and new venture creation.

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