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.

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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. I went back and calculated the number of companies in the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures portfolio who have at least one founder who is female, from an underrepresented minority group, or LGBT.

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NOVEMBER 16, 2015

It's a story that just hit a milestone--a $4mm round of venture funding that I'm ecstatic to say Brooklyn Bridge Ventures just led. But just because you could see them everywhere doesn't make them an obvious venture bet--nor does it tell the story of how the round even came to be.

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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.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 5, 2015

So I asked a few founders that I've worked with and they mentioned a word that struck me--because I've never heard any of the hordes of people in my inbox asking for internships, VC job recommendations and advice, etc. I think of venture capital as a service business. mention about themselves. Generosity.

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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. No blog post about how Tiger is crushing everybody because it’s deploying all its capital in 1-year while “suckers” are investing over 3-years can change this reality.

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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.

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 16, 2014

They count on me to be a good steward of their capital, and to take reasonable and appropriate risk with the expectation of a certain level of returns. That also means that I need to act in a way that ensures my ability to get future opportunities to invest their capital in attractive deals. Venture Capital & Technology'

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

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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! By Elliot Levy , Healthtech Associate at Dreamit Ventures Book Office Hours with me. To get to partners, often you’ll have to go through the associate first.

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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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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. Opening up our circle to create and scale genuine engagement for people outside of typical venture networks is how we do business—and we’re getting exceptional deal flow because of that.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 12, 2014

How does one make money raising a venture fund of this size? That means I have a total budget of a little over $200,000 to run the entire operations of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. million of initial capital with all its fees and stuff, and you''ve got about $6 million of gains. Venture Capital & Technology'

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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. In venture, it’s all about getting an opportunity to make partner and being included in the carry—the economic upside of a fund. Not all hires, however, are made equally.

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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? But venture capitalists do, particularly good, experienced, and confident venture capitalists.

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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. Firms like Baseline, Felicis, ff Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle, HomeBrew, IA Ventures, K9, Lowercase, NextView, Resolute, Rincon, Crosscut and the countless other great firms we all now know didn’t exist.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Today we’re announcing that my partner Kara Nortman is becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to welcome her to her new role. She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. She had all of the skills and traits we sought?

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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. They are unique to you and not to each other situation that VC has faced. ” I responded. Your decisions are unknowable.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. 2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth. What do you do with a $650 million platform?

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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.

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.

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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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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

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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The Seraf Compass

JANUARY 11, 2023

Now let's take a closer look at capital allocation strategy and the life cycle of a venture fund. 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. social impact, corporate, etc.) or some other criteria.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

I am so proud and humbled to be able to formally announce that Upfront Ventures has raised its 6th venture capital fund in the past 21 years. A huge thank you to all of the Limited Partners who have entrusted us with your capital, time and reputations. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

After years of trying to persuade Kara Nortman to become a partner at Upfront Ventures I can officially announce now that she’s joined us effective immediately. Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). Let me start with the news that I’m excited to share with you.

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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. It was exactly how you''d imagine a venture firm to throw a party.

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DECEMBER 3, 2020

The partner at the fund, the VC, gets to do the fun part—the meeting with founders, vetting deals, negotiating, helping, etc. Having a better overall portfolio of venture capital by adding funds into the mix. In fact, that number is probably even more than the average VC fund has the bandwidth to make.

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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

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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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

This is part of a series of advice for founders who need to raise money from venture capitalists. 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. these are simply guidelines.

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AUGUST 24, 2015

But I do have some insight into how this will affect venture markets. When many venture investors are seeing their personal public portfolios tank it creeps into their business lives and creates an emotion that is less risk tolerant whether they’re aware of it or not. I caution people from thinking this is necessarily a bottom.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 14, 2014

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures came in first, with a whopping 61%. Lerer Ventures was second, with just under 20%. Take the most widely used number--that way fewer women are getting venture funding than guys. Most companies don''t ever raise venture capital and they do just fine. Well, it''s gotta mean something, right?

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 22, 2020

To a VC, $50,000 a pre-sale isn’t really that much. VCs are less interested that you sold 10 customers, 20, or 100—they want to understand how many you’re selling per week and whether or not that kind of pace would be profitable for your sales & marketing efforts.

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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 7, 2024

But progress is being made as seen in the rising number of women-led venture funds that focus on funding women entrepreneurs. In addition, Crunchbase reports that w omen-founded venture firms in the U.S. venture firms allocated only 22% of their deals to female-founded startups. billion of total venture capital.

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