Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” It was more hedge fund than venture capital.

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Haystack

JANUARY 18, 2020

Having spent time around and then in the world of VC in the Bay Area during the last decade, I’ve been reflecting on how different norms in the industry have changed. At the start of 2010, there was some unwritten VC industry conventions that have been tested, challenged, and upended in the last decade. That is for another post.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I thought about things I never had to as an entrepreneur: check size, ownership percentage, deal stage, portfolio construction and risk. But I guess you could say the same about VC.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

OMERS Ventures’ Principal Michelle Killoran has long been looking for a construction tech startup to invest in. Meanwhile, Jim Barrett, chief innovation officer at Turner Construction, was facing a similar challenge. Toronto, Ontario-based OMERS Ventures is the VC arm of OMERS, the pension plan for Ontario’s municipal employees.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 19, 2021

Bay Area-based construction startup TraceAir today announced a $3.5 The raise includes existing investor Metropolis VC, along with new additions Liquid 2 Ventures, GEM Capital, GPS Ventures and Andrew Filev. The pandemic has thrown the construction industry for a loop (along with countless others). million Series A.

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TechCrunch

MAY 20, 2021

Builders VC led the round, which included participation from Celtic, Newfund and Wish co-founder Danny Zhang. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar The company plans to take its new capital and “go deep into the product side.”. trillion-dollar industry.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 13, 2022

The trillion-dollar construction industry is often tarred with the inefficiency brush , accused of failing to move with the times and ignoring digitization in favor of legacy tools. But there is plenty of evidence that things are changing, with countless startups raising large sums of cash to help the construction industry modernize.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 5, 2016

Just don't go picking someone who really doesn't compliment you just because it's some kind of VC rule. I've heard a lot of VCs tell founders they need co-founders--and that they wouldn't look at a business at a very early stage without a co-founder. The same holds true for VC funds.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 20, 2011

This is extra frustrating in an era in which all you read about is how frothy the VC / funding market is these days. Obviously the diagnosis can have many route causes: Sometimes it’s a question of a market that is less sexy than the current VC fad. I try to be constructive. He was price signaling without knowing it.

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Founders Coop

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

I worked for Yvon and Malinda in the mid-’90s, first heading up the “technical” products group (all the sport-specific products requiring specialized fabrics and construction), and then leading the effort to build the company’s first online store. We already know we’re outliers in the blue-shirts-and-khakis world of venture capital.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

It’s why raising a round of capital often feels like a hollow victory because it almost feels like a temporary reprieve from the Grim Reaper and in a way every new round just sets the bar higher to clear for the next round of financing or the hope of reaching profitability. The best VCs follow up but then so, too, to the best entrepreneurs.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Yet how we conceive buildings, architect them for their uses, and ultimately construct them on a site has changed remarkably little over the past few decades. Housing and building costs continue to rise, and there remains a slow linear process from conception to construction for most projects. million in seed capital.

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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 7, 2024

billion of total venture capital. of all VC funds raised in 2022 to 17.2%—seen as part of a decade-long trend. of all VC funds raised in 2022 to 17.2%—seen as part of a decade-long trend. Construct Capital , co-founded by Dayna Grayson previously at NEA and Rachel Holt, a past Uber executive.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

When it comes to construction projects, any type of delay can result in increased costs both for the contractor and their customer. It is also interesting that Tiger Global is a co-lead as it is yet another example of the investment giant backing a construction tech company — a growing area of interest for the firm.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 4, 2023

One of the quieter conversations in venture capital has only grown louder, in my DMs and interviews, over the past few months: The known bias in venture capital has been a branding issue for some of the emerging, diverse fund managers just now splashing onto the scene. I interviewed the past and present guard over at Kapor Capital.

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TechCrunch

JULY 16, 2021

Dayna Grayson has been in venture capital for more than a decade and was one of the first VCs to build a portfolio around the transformation of industrial sectors of our economy. That’s where Construct Capital came in. A former NEA partner and a former Uber exec just closed their $140 million debut VC fund.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2011

You can do nearly absolutely anything within one or two years time--as long as you put your mind to it and construct a plan. He was interested in venture capital and was a year away from graduation. I'll talk more about this at my upcoming General Assembly talk , but here's the outline. Write down all the tasks done, skills used, etc.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 25, 2013

It's even more relevant now that I've started the first venture capital fund in Brooklyn-- Brooklyn Bridge Ventures --and invested in four Brooklyn based companies. Three companies from the Studiomates community-- Sherpaa , Tinybop , and Editorially --received VC dollars in 2012. via Brownstoner. Barclays Center.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Understanding TAM is essential for startup success — especially in a down market when VC dollars are harder to come by. That’s why we’re thrilled that Dayna Grayson, the co-founder and general partner at Construct Capital, will join us onstage at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Haystack

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, over-concentration, which also puts the pool of capital at risk. There are countless posts on portfolio construction, or how many investments are ideal in a venture portfolio, and so forth. That may be too much diversification. I am not qualified to opine on the topic.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 16, 2012

There's nothing personal about this particular area for them and it's unclear what motivates them to keep going--other than the prospect of having a VC validate them. Stories create a construct-a framework to make sure we've accounted for all the parts. I wasn't just watching game and a psychologically satisfying stat being reached.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

The firm has an Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tel Aviv presence, and now has a $160 million sack of funds to deploy across its focus areas: sustainability and technological innovation in the construction, real estate and manufacturing industries. It especially wants to reduce waste and CO2 emissions. ”

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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.). What can we learn from the best 40 venture capital investments of all time? We reviewed CB Insights’ global list of “40 of the Best VC Bets of all Time.”

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

Artisanal Ventures , a Bay Area venture capital firm investing in B2B cloud startups, closed on its first fund, the oversubscribed $62 million Artisanal Ventures I. Van Nest was previously a venture investor at Blumberg Capital. He has brought in Andrew Van Nest as a partner. million for early-stage companies and $2 million to $3.5

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Stuart is well worth following on Twitter & now that’s he’s a VC he is likely to share his wisdom more freely. I started working with David when I was an entrepreneur and he was an associate with a VC firmed called … wait for it … GRP Partners (now Upfront Ventures)! The stories still to be told?:

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 31, 2020

Alex Wilhelm uses his weekday column The Exchange to keep a close eye on “private companies, public markets and the gray space in between,” but one effort stood out: An overview of six API-based startups that were “raising capital in rapid-fire fashion” when many companies were trying to find their COVID-19 footing.

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Hunter Walk

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Why Investing Our Savings Instead of Other People’s Money Let Us Rethink What Venture Capital PMF Looks Like in the Decade Ahead. an entire city constructed from bee hives, digital art [DALL-E]. There’s lots and lots of institutional capital out there, much participating in its own self-commoditization (a whole separate post).

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Red Rocket

MAY 22, 2024

CB Insights, a leading research organization that tracks venture capital financings, recently released its report on t he state of the venture capital market in 2023. The long story short is: it was a terrible year for raising capital. A pretty bleak picture if you are a startup raising capital today.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 27, 2021

Bobby Franklin is the president and CEO of the National Venture Capital Association and previously served as an executive vice president for the CTIA – The Wireless Association. A new foreign investment bill will impact venture capital and the US startup ecosystem. Let’s be clear: The venture capital industry has lacked diversity.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 16, 2020

But, from the perspective of raising capital, 2020 has not been an awful time to be a startup founder. The world has changed, but the fundamentals of raising capital are the same. In the first half of the year, VCs invested $129 billion , and Q3 is up 9% year-over-year, reports Crunchbase. Times are tough.

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Haystack

JANUARY 2, 2020

A topic that’s been on my mind a lot in 2019 is “time diversity” in venture capital funds. From what I’ve gathered from LPs and VC mentors, in previous eras, the initial deployment period of a VC fund (not including reserves for follow-ons, etc.) These are firms that have returned capital at scale.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

We raised a seed round of capital in 1999 and our first venture capital round was the first week of March 2000 (e.g. We were now set to close at $46 million in new capital. I had very little cash in the bank yet the stories were still coming out about how we were going to change the world of online engineering and construction.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 1, 2022

While your odds of creating a perfect pitch deck that captures coveted VC interest aren’t quite that dire, they’re not exactly in your favor, either. Venture capital shattered records around the world in Q4 2021. During this session, Siniscalco will dissect and critique actual work-in-progress pitch decks submitted by audience members.

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Revolution

APRIL 24, 2023

As investors with capital to put to work, we have to have a ‘challenge accepted’ mindset.” Industries like construction, commercial real estate, and transportation and logistics are looking into sustainable practices as regulatory pressures become more active over the next 5–10 years, requiring compliance. What spaces are you watching?

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TechCrunch

APRIL 6, 2023

You’ll hear from the likes of Bain Capital Ventures partner Ajay Agarwal; Construct Capital co-founder and managing partner Dayna Grayson; General Catalyst partner Mark Crane; and many other industry experts. Just look at this packed agenda if you don’t believe us!

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

Brian Walsh is the head of WIND Ventures , the venture capital arm of COPEC, a leading energy company in Central and South America and the U.S. SPACs are the construct VCs need to fund clean tech. WIND Ventures provides mobility, energy and retail startups and scaleups with access to Latin America.

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David Teten VC

FEBRUARY 17, 2025

At Coolwater Capital , the Y Combinator for VC funds, we assess this as part of our diligence process. See 33 Questions We Asked Ourselves Before Starting Pace Capital and Alexander Jarviss collection of investment theses. And at Orrick , we assist fund sponsors with preparing their constitution.

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