This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. She’s a painter and a self-proclaimed Bohemian. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She hasn’t raised any venture capital. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary.
University research is a big business for many schools. It certainly worked out pretty well when Stanford licensed the search technology that Larry and Sergei had been working on back to them at Google. They netted more on that deal than Fordham has in it's whole endowment (but still, go Rams!). On top of that, most of a school's major donors are likely to be entrepreneurs in some way.
Early stage investors have been arguing over this for years. Do they bet on the entrepreneur (jockey) or the business idea and plan (the horse)? This is serious stuff. If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. My answer always varies as I examine each deal, sometimes deferring and passing on an investment because of an uneasy feeling about the ent
Back in October, Techcrunch announced that Dropbox had raised $250mm at a seemingly absurd valuation. Many firms, including my firm Benchmark Capital, participated. When this happened, many people asked us why this was a special company that would cause us to break our standard investment paradigm. They didn’t quite understand why this was a company that deserved [.].
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
Next Wednesday night, I'm hosting a roundtable discussion between Brooklyn innovation community stakeholders on how to make this side of the river a better place to create, build businesses and grow. There's no specific agenda or goal, other than to bring together all of the people that have an interest in this great community and its ability to incubate cutting edge and creative ideas.
Since I launched my fund , I've gotten around 50 offers to work with me. For some reason, everyone wants to be a VC. Instead of responding, I decided to sit on them. The way I figure it, how someone approaches me is indicative of how they'd approach an entrepreneur. Since the best entrepreneurs are busy running their business and get pinged by VCs all the time, you're not going to wind up getting a deal if all you do is e-mail once, give up, and walk away.
Since I launched my fund , I've gotten around 50 offers to work with me. For some reason, everyone wants to be a VC. Instead of responding, I decided to sit on them. The way I figure it, how someone approaches me is indicative of how they'd approach an entrepreneur. Since the best entrepreneurs are busy running their business and get pinged by VCs all the time, you're not going to wind up getting a deal if all you do is e-mail once, give up, and walk away.
My friend and fellow SoCal venture capitalist Peter Lee wrote a post about the different roles within a VC and spent much time on the role of an associate. VC’s keep different titles but the most common that I’ve come across that are investment professionals are (in ascending order of seniority): analyst, associate, principal and partner.
Negotiations. We all think we’re good at them. Most people aren’t that good. For many the idea of negotiations is “let’s split the difference 50/50.” In some situations this is the right answer. In many cases it’s not. I learned many of my negotiation techniques through experience. But I did read a couple of books on the topic that were useful: 1.
I cannot tell you how many times I have seen executive summaries of business plans in which the entrepreneur seeks $5,000,000 to build the business. First, few startups can use that much money today with all of the virtual services available and increasingly inexpensive methods of development, prototyping and marketing. Second, almost no professional investor will consider putting that much into a startup until there is proof of market demand, product viability or some other mitigation of failur
Attached are my thoughts on the Facebook S-1 along with some quick stabs at valuation. Brief disclosure, Benchmark Capital has a minority position in Facebook as a result of the acquisition of FriendFeed, a company that was incubated in our offices. I thought it would be useful to look at Facebook using the scorecard from our [.].
Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?
I love this statement from John Tukey, coiner of the word ‘bit’ to describe a single switch of digital micro-data. Tukey was a statistician, one you would expect to describe events in terms reeking with precision. Instead, Tukey implored us to think in terms of relevancy, cause and comparisons to known events. And all this ethereal talk makes me think of how we investors and entrepreneurs are often led to search for instances in which our plan can be wrong, based upon a past measure.
In March of 2008, Perry Chen contacted me to ask for my help with fundraising--not the kind of crowd fundraising that he specializes in--but venture capital. It was before Kickstarter got its "e" and it was spelled "Kickstartr." I don't think it had even launched publically at the time. I wasn't at a venture capital firm at the time, but since I had worked for USV and had also raised an angel round myself, a lot of people used to ask me about how to raise money.
There, I said it. Oh, so you had noticed. Great. then at least we're all starting on the same page and I don't need to explain half the story to you. Don't know who he is, besides that? Well, he's the Knick point guard who dropped 38 on Kobe Bryant the other night. And also Asian, yes. A Harvard grad--all listed 6'2'' of him. So who cares, right? Well, people did care--at least they used to, but not in the right way.
I recently wrote a post about negotiating with suppliers called “ The End of the Mexican Road.” The post talked about how to find the lowest acceptable price & terms in a deal through testing. In the post I made clear that I believe that all negotiations should seek to find fair deals where both parties can feel good about the outcomes.
Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.
When Chantel Waterbury came to pitch me back in August of 2010 for chloe + isabel , she started off the conversation with a simple description--that there were four other companies in her space each doing over a hundred million dollars of revenue and that, in total, they still made up a small percentage of the overall market. She told me a few assumptions about how much each of her merchandizers would sell, and within a couple of minutes I was super psyched about the potential for her business a
An amazing catch setting up a 4th quarter come from behind victory against a team we weren’t supposed to beat. Where have a seen this before? The Giants did it again, winning their fourth title in my lifetime. Now I know how Yankees fans feel—except that this year and in ‘07, these were teams that were counted out before they really got started.
From the time we learn to manipulate our parents from the crib to the present day, we learn to negotiate to obtain our wants and needs. As we grow, we negotiate constantly with our parents, then with our peers. As we enter the business world, we negotiate with our bosses and our subordinates. We negotiate with our suppliers, customers, investors, and even our auditors.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 24,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
363 
Let's personalize your content