A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 14, 2020

And here we are, with a 24×7 global marketplace for crypto assets that has a market capitalization of over half a trillion and daily volumes in the hundreds of billions. This pales in comparison to the legacy capital markets, but that is always the case with a new entrant on the scene. Anyone can do it. And many/most do that.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

AUGUST 4, 2023

As an entrepreneur or founder starting a business, you may think of capital as purely monetary. Capital is often viewed only as an opportunity for an infusion of money into a business to get it started or grow and scale your company. Many entrepreneurs leverage a uniquely laser-focused mindset to bring their vision into reality.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Last week a company we enthusiastically backed, uBeam , led by a very special entrepreneur, 25-year-old Meredith Perry , announced a $10 million round of financing. And not enough capital embracing these moonshots. Startup Lessons' It’s just being driven by people working on it and being ambitious ” . Working on it.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

And the loosening of federal monetary policies, particularly in the US, has pushed more dollars into the venture ecosystems at every stage of financing. how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? What Has Changed in Financing? even before the pandemic itself has been fully tamed. Of course we can’t.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

I’m not saying I’m not investing – just that I’m generally aware that the market does drive venture capital fundings and I’m very interested to see how September plays out. It will make follow-on financings much harder and people will have to consider whether or not to do inside rounds.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. So if you’re able to raise easily no problem.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

OCTOBER 27, 2023

We reconnected in 2016 and began angel investing in startups in New York City.  When we decided to invest in a startup, it was because we saw a unique combination of a strong idea with a solid team. For the HBS founders we interviewed, there was no “lightbulb moment” for their startup idea. Be as capital efficient as you can be.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). 15 years ago we were at the peak of Internet hype with the launch of many over-capitalized businesses with a market size & opportunity was limited.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

We believe this consistency in leadership and intuition for where the markets were going in the heady days of 2019–2021 helped us to stay sane in a world that momentarily seemed to have lost its mind and since we have new capital to deploy in the years ahead perhaps I can offer some insights into where we think value will be derived.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

I’m very worried about any company that has moderate growth plans for 2023 that expects to get another round of financing based on that result. To me, that has a high chance of putting off the inevitable—running out of money during a fundraising process. I can’t guarantee that stepping on the gas will get you that next round.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

I understand this instinct for more capital and I have two very different personal experiences: In my first company we raised an A-round of $16.5 conversation literally every week with startups. Every time you ask for money you’re faced with the possible of feeling literally and figuratively like a failure. million or $4 million.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. Innovate In the early years of a startup there is a lot of kinetic energy of enthusiastic innovators looking to launch a product that changes how an industry works.

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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. If you are a venture capital investor and you''re not preparing yourself to succeed in a more diverse ecosystem of entrepreneurs, you''re just going to get left behind. Stop--AND think. That''s less than 10%. That''s 25%.

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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 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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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 19, 2021

Over the last 18 months, the early-stage financing market has seen dramatic changes characterized by these three things: A shift from in-person fundraising to virtual fundraising A reduction in financing process timelines from months to weeks A continued increase in the amount of capital available for early stage companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 19, 2017

One of the hardest decisions entrepreneurs make when they start a company and raise outside capital is figuring out what an acceptable “burn rate” is. How Much Capital You Have Raised / Your Runway In general I recommend that in early-stage startups you try to raise at least 15-18 months of runway.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). 5 million was always the classic definition of an A-round between the late nineties (crazy financings aside) and say 2007.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 17, 2014

They just move too painfully slow to work with startups. I don''t know the startup networks in Chicago or Boulder, so it''s that much tougher to filter the top of the funnel for out of towners. There are roughly 400 venture deals being done in NYC each year these days, and maybe about 30% or so of those are seed financings.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

” “Mark has a vested interest in talking down valuations of startups.” Most prefer not to say this publicly for two reasons: 1) they have an entire portfolio of startups, many of whom are raising capital and 2) they prefer not to be attacked publicly or seem “anti entrepreneur.” What hogwash.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 8, 2022

When fundraising gets tougher for startups, the existing investors (insiders) will often provide a bridge loan to the company to extend the runway for getting another round done. Most commonly they are a bridge to a round of financing with new investors (outsiders). That is a real round of financing and it is not a bridge.

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Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

Friday, April 3 was supposed to be the orderly launch of the CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) providing $349B of urgently needed funding to struggling startups and small businesses. What are the immediate do’s and don’ts for startups? For instance, one of our startups applied to J.P.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JUNE 19, 2024

Instead, it began with 15 years of hands-on learning in capital markets, working closely with entrepreneurs, investors, and bankers. This experience allowed me to identify a critical void in financing companies: building healthy capital stacks and navigating the public offering process. and more articles from the EO blog.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

If you haven’t raised any money or if you raised a small round from angels or friends & family I would suggest you avoid setting up a formal board unless the people who would join your board are deeply experienced at sitting on startup boards. What happens at the A-round of venture capital? Of course it happens all the time?—?especially

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2022

Only a small minority of people are born into the kinds of connections and life paths to provide them instant access to capital. Morality aside, I’d say given the inherent riskiness of startups, I’m not sure this would be a great addition to your cap table. I’m a straight white dude who grew up in NYC and worked in finance.

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AsiaTechDaily

SEPTEMBER 17, 2023

Register Japan has relaxed regulations to permit startups to raise investment funds through cryptocurrencies. With this, the Japanese government now allows startups the flexibility to secure capital using crypto assets in addition to conventional stocks. Japan’s Five-Year Development Strategy unveils KANSAI Startup Night Vol.

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 10, 2024

First, few startups can use that much money today with all the virtual services available and increasingly inexpensive methods of development, prototyping and marketing. Third (if you’re keeping score), it is not wise to dilute the founder’s ownership greatly in the first round of financing. Four reasons you should reconsider.

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Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

DECEMBER 4, 2019

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and professionals looking to finance their business? Where can startups find money to launch their businesses? Further reading: Creating a product the market wants is key to startup success. Startup communities – Where to find them and how to get involved.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

You transition from “startup” to real business and it turns out that having an entire team be efficient is more important than that boundless energy but destructive nature of constantly changing direction from the CEO. Great startups have budgets. We brought in Cynthia Stephens to head up finance at Invoca.

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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. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? It was 1991.

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American Entrepreneurship

JULY 15, 2024

“Metropolis has developed a new growth buyout model, demonstrating how innovation and technology can evolve legacy industries for the 21st century,” said Tony Minella, Co-Founder and President of E ldridge Industries , an existing investor in Metropolis that led the recent financing transaction. The financing included $1.05

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Startup CEO experience (Founded P.S. XO along with my good friend Soleil Moon Frye. We believe it’s important to have our partners all based in one location so our starting point is wanting our partners to be based in LA and be committed to making this city a vibrant startup community that is now the third largest in the country.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the OpenAI Startup Fund , OpenAI says.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

If you let them control and manipulate you rather than controlling them, emotions can ruin your startup. Are your friends really suited to the roles you need in a startup ? Your Finances Will Be Quite Strained. Emotions can be incredibly effective in ruining both your workflow and your relationships.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Let me start with the obvious baseline that most people probably know instinctively: Los Angeles is the 3rd largest technology startup ecosystem in the US. Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly. More on both trends later. Success begets success.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 31, 2020

So today, I will write about 2020 in the context of tech/startups/VC/crypto. And they finance the trend that they are directionally correct about. It may be the case that Tesla’s market capitalization is too high, but that allows Tesla to raise $10bn without diluting more than a few percentage points.

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Revolution

MAY 11, 2023

And while this May’s economic backdrop was markedly different from last’s , enthusiasm was high and outlooks remained positive for the startup momentum building between the coasts. Roads, bridges, and transport will make or break a city’s ability to grow its startup ecosystem and talent pool. marking its highest level since 2017.

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