Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). 2009 has been the worst year for M&A in a decade.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations. But take prompts from the VC.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. “Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? .” ” This is a frequent theme of mine when asked to speak to audience about the VC industry.

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startup VC venture capital entrepreneurs 390

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. VC, sales, biz dev, M&A or otherwise. Especially in VC. You know that every turn of the legal documents can add weeks. Any deal.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 15, 2021

VC Lab , an accelerator for venture capital firms, wants to create investors who will back the rest of the world. Today, VC Lab is providing a set of freely available boilerplate documents intended to streamline the process, save everyone time and money and make fund governance structures more accessible.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence. Our first big round of venture capital (our A round) was a whopping $16.5

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startup founder founder startup VC 299

TechCrunch

MARCH 9, 2021

Dropbox announced today that it plans to acquire DocSend for $165 million The company helps customers share and track documents by sending a secure link instead of an attachment. In fact, among the earliest use cases for the company was helping startups track engagement with their pitch decks at VC firms.

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startup disruption pitching VC 139

TechCrunch

MARCH 4, 2022

The D’Amelio family, including TikTok stars and digital creators Charli D’Amelio and sister Dixie , are formalizing their investments in startups with the launch of a new VC fund, 444 Capital. He and Renert had discussions about putting such a fund together, which has a similar focus as Tandem Capital.

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VC capital investment investing 98

David Teten VC

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

It’s hard enough to raise capital from VC, private equity fund, and family offices. The vastly larger universe of B2B companies, many of which have teams focused on pushing VC and private equity funds to evangelize their product to their portfolio. See my list of due diligence questions for VC and private equity funds. .

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venture capital capital ventures VC 126

Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

You’ll learn insight to guide your PPP application process from our discussion with Jim Marshall (Silicon Valley Bank, SVB), Kathryn Hickey (PilieroMazza), and Duncan Davidson (Bullpen Capital), which is viewable in its entirety below. It depends on the bank’s capitalization level. For instance, one of our startups applied to J.P.

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startup communities VC ventures 348

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

A number of individuals also participated, including partners from First Round Capital and Wilson Sonsini, Wiley and Allison Cerilli, David Rose, Tom Wisniewski, Chad Stoller, and Ramesh Haridas, among others. I could not have asked for better mentors in the VC industry than professionals like Fred, Brad, Josh, Chris, Howard and Rob.

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ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2010

In today’s post I want to talk about the concept of a VC flightpath. This is my description of a VC process, not one I’ve heard from other VCs so don’t expect it to be accepted nomenclature. Even when you’re getting the VC love this reality I imagined couldn’t be further from the truth.

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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). Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? Has written a book on venture capital. You betcha.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. How do VCs break out of group think when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people? How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital? I know, I’m weird.

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creativity venture capital entrepreneurs board 400

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2024

As we enter 2024, the capital markets have found their footing and are moving higher. That is good news for the innovation economy because healthy capital markets are a necessary support system. However, optimistic capital markets are necessary but not sufficient for a healthy innovation economy.

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energy venture capital innovation capital 236

Gust

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

In recent years, startup accelerators such as Y Combinator, TechStars or 500 Startups, blogs including Venture Hacks, Fred Wilson’s A VC and Mark Suster’s Both Sides of the Table, and other resources have contributed to closing this knowledge gap. See my blogroll for links to many of the best resources.) Knowledge is power.

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financing finance VC entrepreneurs 178

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. See How to negotiate a partner role at a VC or private equity firm.) At Versatile VC , we’ve used all these models.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

Almost certainly the startup would have raised some capital. And precisely because buyers usually prefer to have limited money go to investors – investors almost always have the ability to say “no” to transactions in the terms of their funding documents (aka “blocking rights”). I’m a VC.

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strategy venture capital advice entrepreneurs 357

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC “ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents. 2006 was the last time I went out to raise venture capital. They eventually took money from non-traditional VC based in the UK.

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founder pitching VC advice 252

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

I read it just after I entered the Venture Capital industry more than a decade ago. The Black Swan should be required reading for any VC or investor. Since I had built 2 document management companies I knew all the reasons why building a document management company would “never work.” I see this often in investors.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 8, 2022

An alternative to a bridge is an “insider round” where the existing investors provide sufficient capital to fund the business for eighteen to twenty-four months. While that can sometimes be the right answer for a startup, I strongly prefer bringing new investors/new capital into a company in every financing round.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

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startup VC entrepreneurs financing 354

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

If you’ve ever had to take out a loan, you know just how many documents are involved in the approval process. Ocrolus is a startup that is hoping to change that with an automation platform that it says analyzes financial documents with over 99% accuracy. It’s a lot. operations.

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VC accelerator capital ventures 97

TechCrunch

MARCH 3, 2021

“Investors see a lot of pitches,” VC and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman noted. “In We used what we know about language and healthy communication from the millions of documents we’ve processed at Writer to come up with 11 words and phrases to remove from your VC pitch deck: Negative associations.

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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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VC advice entrepreneurship sustainability 123

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

A typical VC might see 500 opportunities cross his or her desk every year; for larger, more prominent ones it could be 2,000. VCs therefore use whatever heuristics they can in order to triage the deal flow. That means they spend a lot less time actively seeking out new deals than they do responding to inbound deal flow.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2015

I also write and talk about it frequently because raising capital is a part of sales and this is important for entrepreneurs to understand. So understanding the stage of a VC matters. Also, you need to consider the type of investments each VC does. Finally, the same rules apply for VC firms raising money from LPs.

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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. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah. Series A round.

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board culture VC education 286

David Teten VC

FEBRUARY 17, 2025

If you are launching your own investment management firm, we recommend designing a constitution: a set of documents covering the firms goals, legal obligations, and principles for handling disagreement. At Coolwater Capital , the Y Combinator for VC funds, we assess this as part of our diligence process.

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culture strategy venture capital finance 52

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. You’ve found a VC partner or principal who has invited you to the Monday partners’ meeting. This happens often is sales meetings or VC meetings.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

JUNE 21, 2022

A founder’s guide to startup due diligence What are your chances of actually getting funded by a top VC? The trick, according to private equity lawyer Baz Banai , is to think like a VC , and vet your startup accordingly. As you come across key documents, transfer these into the corresponding folders. Let’s get to it. Weekly ??

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VC startup advice media 86

David Teten VC

JULY 27, 2021

We have collected a wide range of freebies, contests, accelerators, online communities, and VCs designed for student tech founders. I have been researching this both to support Versatile VC ’s portfolio companies and also as part of research for my new book, To University and Beyond: Launch Your Career in High Gear. 1) Your school.

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founder mentorship peer-to-peer pitching 144

Gust

MARCH 19, 2014

The most important is that venture capital firms simply do not fund business plans. Other reasons have to do with the fact that H1B visas (which is probably what you are talking about) are available only to foreign nationals who are already employed by an existing US company, and require documentation you are unlikely to have.

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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 investment investing VC 99

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

But most venture-backed startups are “still overwhelmingly white, male, Ivy-League-educated and based in Silicon Valley,” according to a study conducted by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC. Or will we have to repeat the same conversations about representation failings within VC funds? Think of the worst-case scenario.

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