Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 27, 2010
What do you get when you combine 7 panelist plus one moderator on to a stage for 30 minutes to talk about a serious topic? Answer: Not much. And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. It’s a shame. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. I said almost nothing in the 30 minutes.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2010
If you’re a non-technical founder, while your team is building and refining your product, you’ve got to figure out what to do with your time. I find that first time CEOs often find themselves doing two things, neither of which is productive. First, they spend time throwing product ideas over to your tech team like grenades—blowing up carefully laid and simple product roadmaps, scattering them with feature creep shrapnel.
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Berkonomics
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
All other board functions are secondary. Even venture capitalists who sit on boards where they have significant investments often forget this point. They write into their investment documents that they will occupy a seat on the board for as long as they are invested in the company, thinking of this as a protection for their investment and tool for them to influence growth.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010
Executive Summary. I believe the rise in angel investing is here to stay and the professionalization of this class (aka “super angels&# or “micro VC&# ) is a good thing for the VC industry and for entrepreneurs. It is basically a return to the type of VC that was done 20 years ago long before the craziness of the Internet boom that skewed things so greatly.
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Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 12, 2010
I recently got an email from a friend who had been approached by a well known VC. He sent me an email asking whether the approach was real and whether he should take it seriously. Here is the email he received (reprinted without names with his permission). “Hi [entrepreneur], I hope all is well. I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company].
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Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. Part 2 discussed the need for domain knowledge since merely “joining the right club deal&# will in no way determine success. Not everybody agreed on the need for domain knowledge.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
I think we’ve all come to accept that “ banner blindness &# is a real phenomenon. Sometimes you see solutions and immediately know they just make sense. Solve Media is that. In the early days of the Internet as an advertising medium the industry organized to create “standard ad units&# for which most media companies would sell their inventory.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 25, 2010
When I first read Paul Graham’s blog post on “High Resolution&# Financing I read it as a treatise arguing that convertible notes are better than equity. As I’m generally a believer in ‘pricing rounds’ I initially didn’t agree with the premise of the post. Photo credit: D. Story/J. Blanchard/O’Reilly Media. I just re-read it and on second reflection, I’m surprised just how much I found myself in near TOTAL agreement with Paul.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
This is the fourth article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. The first three skills I espoused were: access to the highest-quality deal-flow, domain knowledge of the topic area in which you’re investing and access to VCs to help fund the next stages of development.
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Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 19, 2010
This is the fifth & final (I promise!) article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. After that it’s domain experience, access to VCs and deep pockets. 5. Access to buyers – I saved the least obvious for last. Most people think that being a successful investor is about finding the right deals and nurturing the teams through the difficult times to come out with
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2010
Yesterday, Howard Morgan announced First Round’s investment in SinglePlatform , a company started by Wiley Cerilli. For almost as long as I’ve been at First Round , we’ve been thinking a lot about the gap between the average experience of a local merchant and the huge marketing opportunity that the internet and social networks represent.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 1, 2010
There’s been a lot of debate recently in the market about what kind of investment structure is best for angel and seed arounds. Mark Suster , Seth Levine , Fred Wilson , and Chris Dixon have all weighed in and there’s more on RWW. Here’s my own personal take, not any kind of official First Round take: You should read all of these posts, instantly forget everything you read, and then do what it takes to go out and find the investors who are most passionate, most willing, and most able to help you
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
A day or two after I joined First Round , back in October, I ran into Ari Jacoby at the Ace Hotel. I had just finished reading “ Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom.” Needless to say, how the brain works and how it interprets messages was on my mind—especially around the ones we want to keep there, like education and in this case, branding.
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This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2010
Nine years ago, I walked up Madison Avenue with a pregnant co-worker back to the Upper East Side, after just having witnessed the falling of the first tower during the 9/11 Attacks. I was working at the General Motors pension fund, and we were all huddled together in the trading room, which was the one place we had a television. I had just graduated college that year.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010
This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here. Part 2 discussed the need for domain knowledge since merely “joining the right club deal&# will in no way determine success. Not everybody agreed. Paul Kedrosky made the case for “naive optimism&# being an important part of startup success.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 30, 2010
I was recently involved with a company (not as an investor) where an embarrassing mistake was made. One of the leaders took a sort of “heads will roll&# approach. It’s not my company so I basically stayed out but tried to encourage him to think differently about the “punishment.&# I didn’t stick around for the repercussions so I hope the process was balanced.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 8, 2010
I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. It originally appeared on TechCrunch as a guest post but just in case you missed it there. My primary role was “chief psychologist&# and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. Both are basically people businesses.
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Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
I had a really fun 20-minute interview with Howard Lindzon of Stock Twits as part of a 5-part series on whether the web is dead. If you have 20 minutes I think you’ll enjoy watching. I’ve also covered the general topic in the text below the video embed. Obviously taking on this topic is bound to be controversial and I’m not trying to pick any many fights but I think it’s worth a healthy debate.
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “ mobile first, web second &# product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic). I resisted the temptation to jump in with a response because I knew it was too complicated of a topic to discuss on Twitter. But I thought I should do a quick post on the topic. 1.
Berkonomics
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
No board member should be grandfathered, guaranteed a board seat forever. Practically speaking, this is an impossible goal. We have investigated the restrictions imposed by investment documents and the obvious need to keep continuity on the board with the retention of the CEO position at the very least. But it would be the best of form to require in the bylaws of a corporation that all seats are re-elected annually.
Berkonomics
SEPTEMBER 20, 2010
In my last insight, I described the CEO who stacked the board with two friends, making a majority for control purposes and relegating the investor representatives to insignificance. There were no outside board members with industry experience, no members the CEO trusted with governance backgrounds, no scientists to evaluate the technology that is the core asset of the corporation.
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This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
I check in to make my world smaller, friendlier, more familiar--so that you'll see where I go and think about joining me, or just say hello. I tweet so that you won't ask me what I do for a living, but instead ask me about kayaking, steak, or biking--or maybe jump right into the meme of the moment, be it helmets or cloud to cloud backup. I friend to learn about you--to see where you came from and the friends you left behind that you visit on long weekends.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
If you work in data security, you know what a honey pot is--it's a place where you can lure the bad guys in, because it looks like a place that you can do bad stuff and get away with it. When you bring all the bad guys to one place, that gives you the best opportunity to catch them. In the real world, though, that presents some problems. Fake data doesn't really catch people in the meatspace.
This is going to be BIG.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010
Sometimes, my friends who don’t work in and around startups ask me what my hours are. I have no idea how to even answer that question. Am I working when I attend a lecture on a tech topic of interest? Am I working when I’m hanging out with a bunch of actual friends of mine who work at startups on a quest to find the best steak in New York? I got a potential deal from the latter, but I wasn’t thinking of it like work at all.
Berkonomics
SEPTEMBER 13, 2010
Start-ups with one founder rarely have or need a board of directors. In fact, such a board would seem out of place in a one person company. As soon as any outside money is ingested into the corporation, others have a vested and legal interest in the behavior of officers entrusted with the best use of funds. Money from friends and family usually is offered in a casual manner with much less restriction than professional investors, so that a formal board is a logical step but not often created u
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