This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 31, 2014

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. Venture Capital & Technology' 8) Find a lead. How did you pick who to pitch?

VC 379

VC pitching venture capital capital 379

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There’s a quick litmus-test conversation any early-stage VC will have with the founder and it’s one that you should be as prepared for as your elevator pitch. It goes something like this … VC: “How much money are you raising?” Founder: “$8–10 million” VC: “What’s your current burn rate?” A VC is looking for reasonableness.

VC 247

VC capital financing finance 247

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Technology solutions are now used by authoritarians to monitor and control populations, to stymie an individual company’s economic prospects or to foment chaos through demagoguery. Of course we can’t.

ventures 471

ventures VC venture capital funders 471

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.

MAY 12, 2014

million of initial capital with all its fees and stuff, and you''ve got about $6 million of gains. A fund that returns three dollars for every dollar of capital invested would be a $2.4 Venture Capital & Technology' Subtract the $8.3 That''s a little over a million dollar gain for me personally. million return for me.

VC 419

VC venture capital capital ventures 419

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 14, 2020

A few years ago, maybe in 2016, we held a discussion of blockchain and crypto technologies at the annual meeting of our limited partners. I recall someone in the audience suggesting that the NYSE and Nasdaq could rebuild their markets on top of these technologies. The legacy capital markets are not sitting still.

innovation 257

innovation capital communities opportunity 257

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JUNE 1, 2021

But until very recently, raising capital for your startup was significantly easier if it was located in the major startup hubs, most notably Silicon Valley. It takes a long time, at least five years and more likely a decade, to know how changes in the startup economy and venture capital will play out. And we are doing exactly that.

venture capital 279

venture capital capital investing investment 279

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

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every potentially good VC previously worked for Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman. Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. So what about a Techstars-like program for new VCs? How can we leverage them to help create the next generation of VCs?

accelerator 371

accelerator mentorship VC incubation 371

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.

VC 223

VC venture capital capital investing 223

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2018

controlling your psychology ) you no doubt have heard me say that raising capital is a sales & marketing process. In order to understand how to “get to yes” with a VC you first need to understand how VC partnerships make decisions and then you can understand how to increase your odds of closing a deal.

VC 314

VC board investing investment 314

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

He talked about how for centuries education had “no technological core” (meaning it was bound by physical locations) and thus disruption was very difficult. Internationalization of Technology. We spoke about what succeeds early in technology market evolutions. He spoke about ROCE (return on capital employed).

education 403

education disruption entrepreneurship venture capital 403

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.

investing 328

investing investment VC venture capital 328

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 407

venture capital VC ventures capital 407

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. Every quarter our firm goes through a process to value our entire portfolio.

venture capital 235

venture capital capital ventures creativity 235

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 409

venture capital creativity VC financing 409

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 23, 2014

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. You''d rather know exactly why I didn''t do a deal than scratch your head over some opaque "VC speak". Venture Capital & Technology'

pitching 367

pitching VC venture capital opportunity 367

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 14, 2020

The NVCA and Pitch Book are out with their Q3 report on the VC industry and what they report is that the VC industry continues to be very active throughout the pandemic. The massive expansion of later-stage private capital continues unabated. The massive expansion of later-stage private capital continues unabated.

ventures 362

ventures VC pitching innovation 362

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Go pitch a VC with an idea, and they''ll tell you to build it. Technology is moving faster, markets are changing more quickly and uncertainty seems to be increasing. Venture Capital & Technology' Go to them with a prototype and they''ll tell you to launch it. Launch it, and they''ll tell you to get more users.

venture capital 392

venture capital pitching health VC 392

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 16, 2024

Add on the fact that some people theorize that the need for venture capital dollars will peak, or potentially already has, and then decline because of the ever-decreasing cost of technology infrastructure as well as the increasing capability of AI to replace expensive humans. That would probably signal the end of the asset class.

VC 243

VC angel investing networking pitching 243

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.

founder 392

founder pitching mix-use venture capital 392

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? And it changed the culture.

VC 466

VC culture sustainability capital 466

Revolution

MAY 23, 2023

Part of the antidote for startups: employing a more prudent approach to raising capital and curating a diverse investor base. To shed additional light on this issue and its ultimate impact on startups, I partnered with the Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation to ask proptech founders about their capital and strategic partners.

real estate 278

real estate venture capital VC innovation 278

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 5, 2015

You can''t rise up as fast taking a job at a VC firm in NYC the same way you could 10 years ago--and you can''t get that USV job as easily as you could. Who''s the VC that everyone *isn''t* trying to network with. Back to Fred--he became a partner at a VC firm after apprenticing there 7 years. Venture Capital & Technology'

startup ecosystem 316

startup ecosystem VC networking venture capital 316

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 14, 2022

There is a lot of criticism of venture capital in web3. Bitcoin did not have or need venture capital. Ethereum did not have or need venture capital. So why would any web3 project need venture capital? That’s why you might want to take venture capital for your web3 project. It is a good question.

venture capital 239

venture capital capital ventures communities 239

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Back in 2009, I wrote a post called The Venture Capital Math Problem. In that post, I argued that the venture capital business could not sustain more than $20bn a year of new capital coming into it and continue to produce good returns to the investors in VC funds. So what did I learn from this mistake?

venture capital 199

venture capital capital ventures VC 199

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. We share insights on technologies, data, and processes that generate alpha. .

venture capital 126

venture capital capital ventures VC 126

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 technology based products and services are benefitting from these losses. 3/ Technology based commerce solutions gain when less people venture into stores to buy groceries, clothes, and other consumer products. And that is a good thing for society.

real estate 279

real estate energy VC financing 279

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

"Square, the payment technology company founded and led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, this evening raised $243 million by pricing its initial public offering at $9 per share, which would imply an market value of around $2.9 Unlike venture capital funds, they don't make money directly off the multiples of their return.

angel investing 407

angel investing venture capital VC media 407

David Teten VC

MAY 26, 2021

How do you raise money for your venture capital or private equity fund from family offices and high net worths? . I see five innovative new methods for raising capital which emerging managers such as Versatile VC are using, which I’ve ranked in roughly descending order of popularity: .

venture capital 136

venture capital capital ventures innovation 136

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Their data looks at tech VCs.

VC 374

VC peer-to-peer entrepreneurs investing 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2015

Try to imagine if you *didn’t* already know Amazon and the company walking into VC meetings telling people they were going to disrupt the selling of all goods starting with books but then extending into electronics, apparel, toys and so forth. What tech has our capital raised gone into? Ok, I get this centralization advantage.

real estate 364

real estate startup disruption incumbents 364

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

SPACs are publicly traded “shell companies” that raise capital in an IPO process and then use that capital to merge with a privately held business. For most of my career as a VC, the IPO has been the holy grail. I don’t take as much offense to this situation as others in the VC business have.

VC 279

VC capital board founder 279

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

MAY 6, 2015

As an active investor in the Los Angeles technology market we’re always seeking to better understand the data and trends of why our market has grown so rapidly since 2009. There are so many great, young funds in the market and many of them are attracting LP capital.

VC 307

VC opportunity media innovation 307

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

It’s why I talk about building VC relationships early – Lines, Not Dots. Fill your VC good will, build relationships, be helpful to them not just asking for things. Early in his days when he was raising capital for DocStoc he came to see me a lot. “I’ve never been a VC before. Be helpful.

advice 407

advice VC networking entrepreneurs 407

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. I divided success into the phases of venture capital and 18 months into writing my first check here was my view (details on each in the link above). “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs.

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387