Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Seed investments are down by any measure (funds, deals, dollars) over the past 3 years in deals < $1 million AND in deals between $1–5 million. 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.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. Even then private market investors can paper over valuation changes by investing at the same price but with more structure so it’s hard to understand the “headline valuation.”

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 16, 2014

There''s been some writing about how VCs and founders interact with each other and it inspired me to take a step back and reflect on what my role is supposed to be with regards to the investments I make and the founders I deal with. Venture Capital & Technology' Here''s what I came up with. I am not an expert.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

At the time almost nobody had heard of the following funds: FirstRound Capital, TrueVentures, Floodgate and SoftTech. But back in 2005 there were a few people who spotted the trend before others and one of the true pioneers was (and continues to be) Jeff Clavier who founded SoftTech VC. I think they were all brand new or just forming.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note. Pre-money ($8m) + investment ($2m) = Post-money ($10m) and the investors now own 20% of your company $2m / $10m. So how DOES a VC think about financings at early stages?

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 12, 2014

If I was optimizing for cash, I would have been an investment banker a long time ago. The fund''s dollars are used both for investments and for administration--so lets''s say I wind up putting about 85% of the fund to work in actual investments. So, ten years from now, investments I make three years from now might be exiting.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

It’s not hard to find people willing to write the narrative that “venture capital is not an asset class” or “venture capital has performed terribly.” That’s a shame because many of these people missed out on what will be a few great VC vintages.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

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. What was the post money on your last round (and how much capital have you raised)? So why does a VC ask you? In the first place they’re looking for “fit” with their firm.

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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! Alana suggests that before speaking to an associate, you gain a basic understanding of the fund’s focus and stages they invest in. What does good prep look like?

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Founder Bounty

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Time and time again i hear about founders that have bigger egos then anything else rejecting offers from top tier VC's (like YC ) and eventually leading thier companies to fail. If you do get and offer from top US VC's take them, dont be greedy and stay humble. Dont have a big ego.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures , the pre-seed and seed stage VC fund I run in NYC, has invested in 64 companies in the last six and a half years. The diversity is the direct result of our mission—to build the most accessible venture capital fund in NY. Twenty-five of them have at least one female co-founder. Five have LGBTQ+ founders.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 6, 2020

But I have been in close contact with the NVCA, many of the major law firms and many of the major VC firms. If your US-based business is adversely affected by Covid-19 such that you would need to lay off employees imminently and having access to capital would enable you to keep more employees on the payroll then you might be eligible.

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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? I went back across the 21 investments I''ve made both at First Round and at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures --a period that dates back to January 28, 2010, when I closed on Backupify. Venture Capital & Technology' That''s an interesting question.

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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. For anything that would be considered a normal investment for the partnership most firms try to make sure every partner has seen the deal and has a chance to weigh in.

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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. Four of my best performing companies-- Canary , Orchard, Ringly and Tinybop --were all pre-product investments.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 354

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venture capital chasing too few great deals. Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venture capital all together. We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. Valuations are out of control” is the mantra of others.

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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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Revolution

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Since the beginning of modern venture capital investing — a relatively nascent asset class — the industry has been biased toward funding what it knows best: founders with familiar demographics (white, male) in familiar geographies (Silicon Valley).

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innovation investing investment pitching 264

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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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Fund investing, like adulting, is boring. That’s the first thing anyone trying to raise a fund needs to understand, as well as anyone thinking about investing in one. The partner at the fund, the VC, gets to do the fun part—the meeting with founders, vetting deals, negotiating, helping, etc. So what’s the point?

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. an investment in your company.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

That story actually begins about eleven or twelve years ago, with a little bit of VC mentoring. I was working for the GM pension fund, an institutional LP, as an analyst, doing a research project on consumer private equity and venture capital investing. That actually makes Ample Hills my first ever angel investment.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 17, 2020

I woke up to a dream this morning where I was playing a game that was very similar to Turntable.fm , a failed effort to create a social music experience that had a moment back in 2011 and that I had invested in via USV. Investments that don’t work haunt me. It comes with the territory in VC. Then I woke up.

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The Seraf Compass

JANUARY 11, 2023

In Part I of this article we discussed several key concepts of fund investment strategy and how funds are categorized, whether it be by industry, geography, stage, specialty (e.g. Now let's take a closer look at capital allocation strategy and the life cycle of a venture fund. social impact, corporate, etc.) or some other criteria.

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strategy VC capital ventures 363

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.

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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. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?—?$15

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 18, 2022

Those values, on a schedule of investments we publish to our investors every quarter, flow through to our financial statements and capital accounts and establish how much an interest in our partnerships are worth at that time. If you might lose money on an investment, it is always best to signal that ahead of time.

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Hunter Walk

APRIL 21, 2025

I entered venture capital with some beliefs – many of which still hold true (such as ‘your LPs are your business partners, not your customers’). But I’ve also seen a few change quite dramatically based upon the progressing ‘game on the field’ and my own VC experiences.

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500

JUNE 9, 2020

As a VC firm, we’ve had to adapt many aspects of our business as well. The post Our Investment Framework Post-COVID-19 appeared first on 500 Startups. As society begins the delicate phase of re-opening, we have also given much thought to how.

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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. 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. YC''s best investing days may be behind it.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). People often ask me what VCs look for when we hire partners and many have asked how to become VCs themselves one day. I can’t speak for other VCs but it may interest you to at least know our thought process at Upfront.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

I believe that the next generation of top companies are far more likely to be founded by people not on VC radars today. We backed four of the female founders in the Inc Female Founders 100 list—another five we passed on and two had rounds oversubscribed before we got a chance to invest. Contact me here to find out more about this.)

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venture capital communities ventures capital 237

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 15, 2020

There have been a lot of calls for VC firms to make more hires from the Black and Brown community, as well as to hire more women. It would be a directive to literally invest in the talent base—to create a path for influence and economic mobility within a firm. Not all hires, however, are made equally.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Via TechCrunch by Arman Tabatabai: Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries. Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020.

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Founder Bounty

MARCH 25, 2025

We have already done the article is antler worth doing here and a lot of you are asking what exactly are the investment terms if they do offer you investment. This varies on the region but below are some of the key figures Investment Amount Antler typically invests $100,000 to $200,000 in pre-seed startups. Antler US).

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 16, 2021

Internet giant Google announced today that it has made the first investment from its Africa Investment Fund in Ugandan super app SafeBoda. Collectively , they have raised over $100 million in venture capital. Google sets up $50M fund to invest in African startups. We are not restricting ourselves to certain verticals.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JUNE 14, 2021

It may be silly and crazy, but it has also been a good investment for my friend and anyone who bought it in the early years. The combination of memes and investing is a powerful cocktail that I have been ignoring for a long time, probably incorrectly. It is easy to dismiss meme investing. That may change. Or it may not.

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