Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

” This is a frequent theme of mine when asked to speak to audience about the VC industry. And this is fueled by the VC culture in Silicon Valley. I was recently talking to a VC about a business I was looking at and I was asking whether he found the business interesting, too. It is VC math, like it or not.

startup 390

startup VC venture capital entrepreneurs 390

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros.

VC 198

VC peer-to-peer mix-use leadership 198

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. VC, sales, biz dev, M&A or otherwise. Especially in VC. If it’s a biz deal you might care about IP protection, revenue share, investment commitments to joint marketing – whatever. You know that every turn of the legal documents can add weeks. Any deal.

venture capital 301

venture capital advice VC real estate 301

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

I was on This Week in Venture Capital today with Jason Calacanis talking about the big VC deals at the moment and talking about the VC industry. Didn’t discuss much but I love the online document collaboration area that Box.net serves including players like Dropbox, Drop.io, DocStoc, Scribed and SlideShare. and much more.

venture capital 232

venture capital ventures capital VC 232

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Or if you’re a VC raising from LPs you have to list all of your deals, your investment value, your carrying value, your multiples, your IRRs, TVPIs, DPIs, etc along with net cashflows plus your previous LPAs. These collective sets of documents form the basis of what somebody looking at investing would call “financial due diligence.”

advice 336

advice VC entrepreneurs investing 336

TechCrunch

MARCH 4, 2022

The D’Amelio family, including TikTok stars and digital creators Charli D’Amelio and sister Dixie , are formalizing their investments in startups with the launch of a new VC fund, 444 Capital. But many of Tandem’s LPs have returned to invest in 444 Capital. Image Credits: Step.

VC 98

VC capital investing investment 98

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

Here’s Why You Should Just Send the Deck I know you have your document sending tool to send your fund-raising deck to VCs and track who read your deck, which pages they read and how much time they spend on each page. Your deck should be so good that a VC asks you for permission to show it to his or her portfolio companies.

VC 239

VC pitching strategy investment 239

Gust

AUGUST 23, 2014

Professional investors typically have a range of information rights that they negotiate for when making an investment. “Information rights” (the ability to come into the office and ask questions and view documents). Invested Interests' Non-voting Board Observer Seat. Annual budgets.

investing 139

investing investment VC board 139

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

2 weeks later and we may never have raised any more VC. I hired a senior exec from the building materials industry (we were a document collaboration company for the engineering & construction industry) who was also ex McKinsey. I did almost every VC meeting myself save for when one of my co-founders, Tim Barker, was in town.

startup founder 299

startup founder founder startup VC 299

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

The funding was anchored by a major commitment from Two Sigma Ventures, the private venture investment affiliate of Two Sigma Investments. The company makes direct and indirect investments across a broad spectrum of asset classes. VCs pitch for money, too. It's the black box of the startup world.

ventures 280

ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

Gust

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

By contrast, venture capitalists and angel investors typically make scores or even hundreds of investments over the course of their careers. Experienced investors often don’t feel the need to involve legal counsel in most typical convertible debt seed or angel round investments. See my blogroll for links to many of the best resources.)

financing 178

financing finance VC entrepreneurs 178

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). We led an investment round in a company a while ago in which we wrote a seven-figure check and have taken a board seat.

venture capital 352

venture capital VC board financing 352

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

startup 354

startup VC entrepreneurs financing 354

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

One of the questions I’m most often asked as a VC is what I’m looking for in an investment. For me I’ve stated publicly that 70% of my investment decision is the team and most of this is skewed toward the founders. I once had a debate with a prominent VC on a panel. How to build relationships with a VC.

entrepreneurs 338

entrepreneurs peer-to-peer advice VC 338

Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

Expect quick loan application processing once banks formalize their processes Work with specific investors and your law firm on affiliation to address specific problematic covenants, if your company is VC-backed. What protective provisions are VC firms willing to forgo to ensure that my company doesn’t get deemed as affiliated?

startup 348

startup communities VC ventures 348

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC “ There’s a great meme developing this morning on the need to simplify funding terms and documents. I tried to argue my views on vesting to a company I tried to invest in 2 years ago. They eventually took money from non-traditional VC based in the UK.

founder 252

founder pitching VC advice 252

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 13, 2019

Instead, we got one of the most lucrative startup investments of all time from a company built off of a legion of drivers unable to make a living wage after expenses, without benefits, and not even classified as employees even when they work for the company for full time hours. Not only that, we have other portfolio companies to worry about.

culture 314

culture incumbents enablement sustainability 314

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2015

If you generate outbound email campaigns to groups of potential buyers you can use SalesLoft or tools like Yesware and ToutApp to track whether people opened your emails, clicked on your links, downloaded your documents, etc. So understanding the stage of a VC matters. Also, you need to consider the type of investments each VC does.

VC 329

VC entrepreneurs investment investing 329

David Teten VC

AUGUST 19, 2019

Does the traditional VC financing model make sense for all companies? VC Josh Kopelman makes the analogy of jet fuel vs. motorcycle fuel. VCs sell jet fuel which works well for jets; motorcycles are more common but need a different type of fuel. . So what is Revenue Based Investing? Absolutely not.

founder 99

founder investing investment VC 99

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

A typical VC might see 500 opportunities cross his or her desk every year; for larger, more prominent ones it could be 2,000. VCs therefore use whatever heuristics they can in order to triage the deal flow. This added exposure can result in indications of interest (investment, acquisition, partnership, etc.)

VC 159

VC angel investing pitching entrepreneurs 159

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2010

In today’s post I want to talk about the concept of a VC flightpath. This is my description of a VC process, not one I’ve heard from other VCs so don’t expect it to be accepted nomenclature. Even when you’re getting the VC love this reality I imagined couldn’t be further from the truth.

VC 275

VC venture capital pitching board 275

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2024

The AI “stack” has emerged with Large Language Models and other important models (like audio, imagery, video, etc) operating in the cloud with well-documented and supported APIs that are available to developers to build on. Trillions of dollars are being invested in the AI sector and that will continue for as far as this eye can see.

energy 236

energy venture capital innovation capital 236

TechCrunch

MARCH 3, 2021

“Investors see a lot of pitches,” VC and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman noted. “In We used what we know about language and healthy communication from the millions of documents we’ve processed at Writer to come up with 11 words and phrases to remove from your VC pitch deck: Negative associations. just X percent”.

pitching 113

pitching VC strategy leadership 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2011

And yes, VC’s, too. You thought it was going to be as easy as just having term sheet transferred to a longer form document. But every freakin’ week there are delays in getting the lawyers to “turn around&# the documents. Negotiate directly with your VC or acquirer with lawyers present in the room.

real estate 319

real estate VC pitching entrepreneurs 319

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

So it’s really hard to draw too many conclusions about whether the investment really makes sense because often you learn stuff in the fund raising about the future strategy of the company that might make you much more excited than somebody on the outside might be. Others I have not. Online peer-to-peer lending. 14.7mm in Series D.

venture capital 265

venture capital peer-to-peer capital ventures 265

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 18, 2024

These are people that didn’t make their money through a tech startup or startup investing. They might have a more flexible time horizon than a VC because the money doesn’t come from a fund with a limited lifespan. I’m not talking about active angels. I’m talking about what someone I know recently referred to as “dentists”.

investing 221

investing investment startup real estate 221

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

If you give $2 million for 20% of a company ($8 million pre + $2 million investment = $10 million post-money valuation) that has no product and no customers and it turns around 3 months later and sells for $5 million it would hardly be fair for investor to get $1 million back (20% of the proceeds). I’m a VC. To the contrary.

strategy 357

strategy venture capital advice entrepreneurs 357

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

I would never as a VC fund a round and then expect somebody else to pay a higher price right after me. I also would never expect another VC to do that to me. And after you feel they’re bought in intellectually and emotionally you can ask them to make a small investment. For the most part I agree with Fred.

financing 294

financing finance pitching VC 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

I want to make sure that my sixth year as a VC doesn’t just become an automatic continuation of what I’ve done in my first 5 years. This can be your star Chief Architect who loves to code but hates having to handle the admin like testing, documentation, recruiting, etc. I don’t want to be on autopilot.

creativity 400

creativity venture capital entrepreneurs board 400

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

The Black Swan should be required reading for any VC or investor. Since I had built 2 document management companies I knew all the reasons why building a document management company would “never work.” I remember when I spoke with Aaron Levie early in the days of Box.

construction 182

construction venture capital consulting support 182

Haystack

JANUARY 20, 2019

When I started out investing (via a fund — not my money), I was just investing based on a simple schedule: About once a month, invest $25K into one company I liked. Fund investing is easy — fund management is not. Pretty easy. but also assess them as a manager of assets (are they a good steward?).

investing 137

investing investment peer-to-peer construction 137

David Teten VC

MARCH 8, 2022

An ever-growing number of family offices want to invest into private tech companies. Generically, I recommend either invest in funds or build the competency to go direct. But I also invested in a number of VC funds in parallel. Consider that successful VCs need to look at 100 companies in order to choose one.

investing 105

investing investment technology VC 105

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 8, 2022

If the bridge documents do not specify anything in this situation, the noteholders will only get their money back, plus interest, in a sale. The ideal discount is between 10% and 20% and so the time frame for the various discounts should be set with that in mind. I like somewhere between 2x and 3x depending on the circumstances.

financing 265

financing finance leadership capital 265

Entrepreneur's Handbook

JUNE 21, 2022

A founder’s guide to startup due diligence What are your chances of actually getting funded by a top VC? The trick, according to private equity lawyer Baz Banai , is to think like a VC , and vet your startup accordingly. As you come across key documents, transfer these into the corresponding folders. Let’s get to it. Weekly ??

VC 86

VC startup advice media 86

David Teten VC

FEBRUARY 17, 2025

Partner, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP; Chair, Orricks Private Investment Funds Group.) If you are launching your own investment management firm, we recommend designing a constitution: a set of documents covering the firms goals, legal obligations, and principles for handling disagreement. Hellman, Esq.,

culture 52

culture strategy venture capital financing 52

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

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. When VCs raise capital from LPs, that money does not just sit in a bank collecting interest. startup) per month.

ventures 334

ventures startup capital board 334

David Teten VC

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. The 11 Steps of Investing in Private Companies. 1) Manage the firm .

technology 95

technology investing investment VC 95