Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

'An abbreviated version of this post appeared yesterday on TechCrunch. If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. “There’s something going on in LA.” It’s the most common refrain I hear from investors and even entrepreneurs these days. I hear it right after people have decided to come by for a few days to “check out what all the fuss is about.” I hear it when I visit LPs (th

entrepreneurs 376

entrepreneurs creativity technology capital 376

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 10, 2014

'What should you price your seed round at? Well, it depends. I could probably write a book on venture round pricing dynamics. It would have lots of philosophy, religion, theory, fiction, and pontification. However, since I only have time for a blog post, I''ll settle for actual data. Since January of 2010, when I led my first seed investment in Backupify , I have led or committed to 27 investments.

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venture capital ventures board accelerator 403

Gust

OCTOBER 26, 2014

'Image via Flickr from Food For Thought album. When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Despite all the focus you hear on external investors, over 90% of startups today are self-funded.

startup 176

startup creativity entrepreneurs advice 176

For Entrepreneurs

OCTOBER 9, 2014

'For the third year in a row, we worked together with Pacific Crest Securities, an investment banking firm with a specific focus on SaaS, to survey 306 SaaS companies. This represents nearly double the # of respondents from last year, giving us deeper benchmarking data and insights to share on the growth and operations of […].

SaaS 167

SaaS investing investment startup 167

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Berkonomics

OCTOBER 30, 2014

'One of my books, Extending the Runway , uses parallels to piloting a plane to equate to the process of creating and building a small company, making maximum use of resources to get to and beyond breakeven. It is worth revisiting the most important point of that book, which was written to prompt discussion between entrepreneurs, professional managers and their boards of directors about issues that could unite them or strain the relationships between them.

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board advice entrepreneurs development 94

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

'When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24. That was three months ago this week. Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning.

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VC ventures leadership board 418

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 3, 2014

'Random story that I recounted recently to someone the other day. It''s super interesting to go back and trace connections and relationships that led to new opportunities. If nothing else, it serves as a good reminder that every thing you do now is an investment in the future. In 2009, I was introduced to Havi Hoffman. She was working as a developer evangelist at Yahoo!

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disruption communities innovation enablement 290

Gust

OCTOBER 19, 2014

'Image via Flickr by Joshua Gajownik for opensource.com. I always advise software startups to file patents to protect their “secret sauce” from competitors, and to increase their valuation. The good news is that a patent can scare off or at least delay competitors, and as a “rule of thumb” patents can add up to $1M to your startup valuation for investors or M&A exits (merger and acquisition).

VC 173

VC technology entrepreneurs innovation 173

Derek Sivers

OCTOBER 5, 2014

I get emails from many people wanting to change or build their career. I always recommend the best book on the subject: “ So Good They Can’t Ignore You ” by Cal Newport. Here are a few of its best points: Forget passion and purpose. Forget “follow your passion” or “find your true calling”. Stop thinking like that. Here’s why: Words like “passion” and “purpose” are dangerous because they sound huge and romantic.

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capital investing investment startup 40

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startup

Berkonomics

OCTOBER 16, 2014

'Especially for social media-based businesses, we all need to recalibrate our thinking about who is the teacher and who is the student. There is nothing wrong with a manager slowing a conversation to ask for more background when speaking to an often-younger and more involved associate. You know what I mean… The conversation goes something like this: “We found it on x site and using y app with z as our data object.”.

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media communities investing investment 79

Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 23, 2014

I met a really smart vice president of sales a few weeks ago working in a company with mid-market customer values in the $10-100k per year range. When I asked her about her sales process, she described how her team employs statements of work (SOW), which isn’t something I hear about very frequently in startups, despite the fact they are very powerful sales tools.

accelerator 40

accelerator pitching construction creativity 40

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

'We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. I think this is a Seriously great example of how this process works for at least one VC – Upfront Ventures. But I’m guessing the narrative is similar elsewhere. I first met Andrew Stalbow , the founder & CEO of Seriously in August of 2013.

media 373

media education VC financing 373

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 1, 2014

'Let''s get one thing straight. The world and every individual in it is a biased place. We all have our inherent biases and what I am not arguing here is that the venture capital world is a fair playing field for anyone. I repeat: I AM NOT ARGUING THAT VENTURE CAPITAL IS FAIR TO ANYONE. HOWEVER. It weakens your argument, whatever it is, when you use faulty logic.

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venture capital capital ventures founder 328

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financing

Gust

OCTOBER 5, 2014

'Corporate boardroom image via Wikipedia. Mid-level or even top executives who “grew up” in large companies often look with envy at startups, and dream of how easy it must be running a small organization, where you can see the whole picture and it appears you have total control. In reality, very few executives or professional stars from large corporations survive in the early-stage startup environment.

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startup culture education entrepreneurs 165

For Entrepreneurs

OCTOBER 22, 2014

'Last week I shared the results from Part 1 of our survey in which 300+ SaaS companies shared data on their growth and go-to-market strategies. This week we dive into the results from Part 2 of the survey where we compare application delivery methods, operational costs and gross margins, contract terms, churn rates, capital requirements and accounting […].

SaaS 149

SaaS strategy capital startup 149

Berkonomics

OCTOBER 2, 2014

'A CEO friend of mine who manages her one hundred person remote workforce as a virtual company told me her story of how she welcomes new employees as she grows her firm. Strike that. She over-welcomes her new employees. Days before the official start date, she makes sure that the new employee’s business cards arrive in the mail, that the employee’s phone and Internet services are up and running, and that an email account is already established.

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culture 83

Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 29, 2014

The real promise of the Internet of Things isn’t simply linking millions of devices together, just like the real innovation of the web wasn’t networking a bunch of computers. Instead, the true and still unrealized potential of IoT is to transform business models; it’s enabling companies to sell products in entirely new and better ways that benefit both the company and the customer.

opportunity 44

opportunity enablement sustainability accelerator 44

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technology

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 5, 2014

'Note: this is a non-religious post. This weekend was Yom Kippur, holiest of the Jewish holidays and the day of atonement. It’s also the day when most Jewish minds are least focused since one needs to fast for 24 hours. I sat in schul listening to the rabbi’s sermon and given my mind is prone to ADD anyways I must admit that my consciousness often floats around the room but even more so on Yom Kippur.

peer-to-peer 337

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs consulting VC 337

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 22, 2014

'I probably do some kind of speaking event at least every other week. This week, I''ve got three things on the docket. Needless to say, I have a fair amount of startup event experience. What I find a bit frustrating is how easily some people get onto panels and are put up in front of an impressionable crowd of new entrepreneurs as "experts". You''ll get a venture capital analyst from a brand name firm who has just recently taken his job talking about what makes a company successful.

ventures 397

ventures startup venture capital pitching 397

Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

'A woman you don’t know tells you that she’s going to run a marathon of 7-minute miles. She’s never run a long distance race before. Would you bet on her completing it in record time? Probably not, right? “Watch me,” she tells you. And so you do. You’re impressed when she clocks her first mile at 7 minutes. A single mile does not a marathon make, but still, it’s a major milestone.

venture capital 163

venture capital capital ventures finance 163

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

'Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). In that article I talked about how PR drives: recruiting, employee retention, biz dev deals, funding and even M&A and that often “attribution” to your PR activities is unknown.

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pitching media advice venture capital 319

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opportunity

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

'Marc Andreessen kicked off another great debate on Twitter last night , one that I’ve been talking about incessantly in private circles for the past 2-3 years – what actually IS the definition of a seed vs. A-round. This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. My view: “Spending any time or energy trying to game the ‘definition’ of your round of fund raising is a total waste.

VC 399

VC advice finance financing 399

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

'Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. They often create the biggest tensions between investors who are investing at different stages in the business. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior.

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VC investment investing entrepreneurs 336

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

'Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). Much less has been said about when the technical CEO is the best person to run the company.

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founder leadership board innovation 309

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2014

'I’m pretty on record as saying I don’t think many private-to-private tech mergers make sense. They are often done from a position of weakness. Something in both companies isn’t working, which is why they come together. I often don’t believe in the therm M&A because in my experience mostly A works. But of course there are always exceptions.

opportunity 296

opportunity ventures venture capital capital 296

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