Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

*. What is the role of a VC for entrepreneurs? I suppose it can be different for every founder and for different VCs but I’d like to offer you some context on what I think it is and it isn’t. I was recently contacted by an entrepreneur who was consider a few different business models for his company.

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APRIL 27, 2013

And I am often approached by entrepreneurs in cities which don’t have a vibrant VC community. Just ask the people of Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Iowa, Princeton, Dallas or countless other cities that don’t have enough venture capital. It’s a goal to help you understand the life of a VC. Ask SuperCell.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 31, 2014

3) Talk to entrepreneurs they''ve backed before to see who really adds value. VC is a service industry and the best investors are always looking for ways to help. Getting a round going requires someone willing to say yes before everyone else does, and risk social capital by telling others they''re in. 8) Find a lead.

VC 377

VC pitching venture capital capital 377

Dream It

JANUARY 13, 2021

The venture capital screening call is an important step to get right in due diligence. Learn how to pass a VC associate screen in under 10 minutes! We understand that as an entrepreneur you’ve got a lot on your plate. To get to partners, often you’ll have to go through the associate first.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 6, 2020

We have been advising a lot of entrepreneurs so I thought I’d “open source” some of the advice I have been sharing. But I have been in close contact with the NVCA, many of the major law firms and many of the major VC firms. Am I ineligible since I’m VC-backed? I am not claiming to be the world expert on this. shouldn’t I?

VC 279

VC peer-to-peer startup advice 279

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

*. If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. At the time almost nobody had heard of the following funds: FirstRound Capital, TrueVentures, Floodgate and SoftTech.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

One of the hardest things about the fund-raising process for entrepreneurs is that you’re trying to raise money from people who have “asymmetric information.” VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. So why does a VC ask you?

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

I use George Bush vs. Al Gore as allegory and I’ve been using it with entrepreneurs for years to sink in a simple point about how to communicate with the market. Most Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs I know are more like Al Gore. In a VC pitch this type of messaging will do just fine. It is election season.

entrepreneurs 370

entrepreneurs pitching startup education 370

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 16, 2014

How long does it take from first meeting a VC to getting cash in the bank? Here were the results: I would guess that getting a third of my deals from events is probably disproportionately high compared to other seed investors on the east coast--and that my VC intro percentage is probably somewhat low. Venture Capital & Technology'

VC 417

VC pitching networking venture capital 417

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 7, 2015

After checking out The Information's "open dataset" on diversity in venture capital , I felt pretty disappointed. Most people need a little bit of capital to bring a product to market--or they're an engineer. VCs have an inflated sense of the value of their own time. VCs have an inflated sense of the value of their own time.

venture capital 367

venture capital capital ventures VC 367

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. Because entrepreneurs often went to lawyers at their earliest stages to get their company registration done. I asked for intro’s from entrepreneur friends.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 3, 2016

That was a question posed to me by a new analyst at a venture capital fund. While there are lots and lots of really kind, generous people working in venture capital--the recently retired Howard Morgan, Hunter Walk, Brad Feld, and Karin Klein for example--it's really tough to argue that there isn't widespread jerkery. So what gives?

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VC venture capital entrepreneurship advice 399

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. You’d be surprised how many firms are “dictator VCs” – even those that don’t formally acknowledge it internally. ” Some firms are collegiate.

venture capital 336

venture capital peer-to-peer capital ventures 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. The typical VC process is as follows: They say there are three rules in property: Location, location, location. Same with VC. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. these are simply guidelines.

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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.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

VC 356

VC peer-to-peer board entrepreneurs 356

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 24, 2015

I recently interviewed Matt Mazzeo of Lowercase Capital. By now most of you know that Chris Sacca invested in what is now thought to be one of the best performing VC funds of all time having invested an $8.4 million fund in: Uber, Instagram, Docker and Twitter, amongst others. Beat the s**t out of me. What could I be doing better?”

VC 334

VC venture capital energy culture 334

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

There was an explosion in number of startups both because it was cheap and there was tons of available capital. 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. Boom in Number of Startups. Explosion in Seed Funds.

venture capital 271

venture capital capital ventures VC 271

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. There are a lot of things I think entrepreneurs should care about when raising from a VC: How big or small their fund is? I’m still not sure.

entrepreneurs 237

entrepreneurs VC mentorship strategy 237

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. VCs have different views and strategies on this.

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VC venture capital capital investing 223

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 If you''re newer to VC math here''s a great primer]. Nobody cares. Why the latter?

VC 399

VC advice financing finance 399

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 23, 2014

Sugarcoating isn''t helpful to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are sending me back notes saying "They turned it down, but I''m not sure why." It just feels like the VC wasn''t that interested in the first place and so they''re not sure what the interest was in the first place. Venture Capital & Technology'

pitching 364

pitching VC venture capital opportunity 364

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

However, in this moment, I think one''s career in venture capital depends on changing your perspective. The biggest question I think VC''s face right now is whether or not, in the future, the best founders will look and act like the best founders of the past. Venture Capital & Technology' That''s 25%.

venture capital 406

venture capital VC ventures capital 406

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too. Wouldn’t we be a bit hypocritical if we talked with entrepreneurs about innovation and change but we weren’t willing to take it on ourselves?

ventures 343

ventures venture capital advice VC 343

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

We talked about how business school historically hasn’t positioned entrepreneurs well for success. I wrote about that before in a post about “ whether MBAs are necessary for entrepreneurs. His class reading lists could be a primer for any entrepreneur, not just MBAs. Venture Capital. I don’t believe it.

education 403

education disruption entrepreneurship venture capital 403

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

Scott and I agree on nearly everything: The VC structure is changing and there appears to be a bifurcation into small & large VCs with an impact on “traditionally sized” VCs. The only point we didn’t seem totally aligned on was what we happening to the “middle of the VC market.”

VC 309

VC SaaS strategy ventures 309

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 23, 2012

I'm often the last one to leave an event, held back by the most persistant of entrepreneurs trying to squeeze as much advice as they can out of me. Venture capital is kind of like a knuckleball. Maybe you reminded them unconsciously of an entrepreneur they regretted passing on in the past. Most startups fail.

advice 416

advice startup VC strategy 416

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 8, 2015

I was a huge Fab.com buyer in the early days when we backed it at First Round Capital. But Fab fell into the trap that many companies who go down the VC route fall into--too much money, too soon, and growing too fast. Venture Capital & Technology' How I got to this investment was another long term story.

venture capital 408

venture capital creativity VC finance 408

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. Local Capital – I do believe that you’ll struggle to get a community started without some local capital.

communities 378

communities startup venture capital capital 378

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. 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?

creativity 400

creativity venture capital entrepreneurs board 400

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 14, 2014

Most companies don''t ever raise venture capital and they do just fine. That''s a much better picture of female entrepreneurship than the 2-4% of venture capital dollars going to women. The main driver of the skew towards men getting venture capital, statistically, is that far more men are pitching. later in their careers.

founder 390

founder pitching mix-use venture capital 390

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.

culture 339

culture VC communities venture capital 339

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2018

If you’re an entrepreneur who would like to see this clause in more startups please ask your VC to include it in future term sheets and link to it from their home page. “We Many of us had experiences of asking entrepreneurs, “Why are none of our candidates women?” Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion. Well, did you ask them to???”

VC 284

VC leadership mentorship entrepreneurs 284

Entrepreneur's Handbook

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Since then, I’ve founded several startups, was employee #3 at a $65m VC firm in San Francisco, and realized that there is a similar phenomenon to what Robert Kiyosaki is talking about in Rich Dad, Poor Dad currently occurring in Silicon Valley. Most entrepreneurs start with one goal in mind: freedom. Forget venture capital.

founder 144

founder VC venture capital entrepreneurship 144

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Any VC will tell you that the ones they said yes to, they mostly got there right away—and that there are very few “maybe” deals that get tipped over the fence. Or that venture capital is a meritocracy? We know what the racial and gender wealth disparity looks like: This is a lesson taught to be by Jewel from Collab Capital.

advice 446

advice pitching venture capital VC 446

David Teten VC

MARCH 1, 2022

The easiest way to work with and for VC funds is to become a part-time scout, getting paid for sourcing investments. How to win consulting, board, operating, and investment roles with private equity and venture capital funds (video). How to find a job as a VC scout. How to get a job in venture capital.

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VC venture capital accelerator ventures 128

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

If you are a super young, well-connected, Stanford CS or EE, worked at Facebook early, have a bit o’ dosh and have VCs chasing you … you are exempt. I know it’s not as sexy as a faster growth rate and a larger round of capital. Your VC is right. Or anybody who remotely resembles you. Wait, a second, Suster.

VC 412

VC advice strategy accelerator 412

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

What I wish for every single entrepreneur out there is to be so majorly disappointed in their lives. Unlike venture capital funds, they don't make money directly off the multiples of their return. What's worse is that this end of the market is even affecting early stage VC mindset. Can we just all let that sink in for a second?

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angel investing venture capital VC media 407