February, 2019

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Why Has Seed Investing Declined? And What Does this Mean for the Future?

Both Sides of the Table

Seed investments are down by any measure (funds, deals, dollars) over the past 3 years in deals < $1 million AND in deals between $1–5 million. What gives? 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.

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Lessons from a Diverse Venture Capital Portfolio

This is going to be BIG.

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures , the pre-seed and seed stage VC fund I run in NYC, has invested in 64 companies in the last six and a half years. Twenty-five of them have at least one female co-founder. Fifteen had co-founders over 40. Five have LGBTQ+ founders. Three teams have African-American founders. Three of the founding teams are married couples. All were backed based on the sole criteria that they had the potential to make my limited partners a lot of money.

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Intensive Design Experience: Preparing Engineering Students for the Real World

Venture Well

An intensive design experience simulates a high-performance team situation to show students what it takes to succeed in the workforce or as an entrepreneur. The post Intensive Design Experience: Preparing Engineering Students for the Real World appeared first on VentureWell.

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How We Turned Our Biggest Setback Into an Innovation Opportunity

Entrepreneurs' Organization

A story about innovating your business to stay ahead of the market, written for EO by Floyd DePalma, CEO of UX agency DePalma Studios. It was the beginning of 2018, and my agency had just lost two of our biggest accounts. These are the fears that keep you up at night, the ones you hope never happen. They’re also the moments that cause you to panic and cloud your judgment.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

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?

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Quickly Unpacking Spotify’s Acquisition Of Gimlet Media

Haystack

I’ve been traveling all week, digging out of email, and closing two deals and — hence — have been pretty quiet online. As I was scrolling through Twitter today and saw the rumors around Gimlet, the podcast media company, being acquired by Spotify for $200M in cash, I knew I had to stop, write this post, and share some thoughts on what’s going on.

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This is the Dumbest Op Ed I’ve Read in a While

Both Sides of the Table

I understand that Adam Grant is a fairly popular professor at Wharton and has a book that some people loved called “Originals” (for me it interesting but not mind blowing, and I have some first-hand knowledge of some of its inaccuracies). Having read his latest op-ed on email I know why I erred towards the side of of not loving his book as much as some did.

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The Potential for Fraud Caused by the Unnecessary Mystery of the Family Office World

This is going to be BIG.

About a year ago, I received a LinkedIn connection from Richard Briggs—a Brooklyn Law Grad who spend 25 successful years at Lehman and was operating his own family office. He knew a bunch of other VCs in NYC and seemed like a great potential Limited Partner connection. There was only one problem. Richard Briggs didn’t exist. No Richard Briggs ever attended Brooklyn Law and none of our mutual connections had ever met him or interacted with him.

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Faculty Spotlight: Dustyn Roberts from Temple University

Venture Well

Professor Roberts strives to create classroom environments and session plans that enable a-ha moments for students. The post Faculty Spotlight: Dustyn Roberts from Temple University appeared first on VentureWell.

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The Power of Entrepreneurial Community

Entrepreneurs' Organization

By Rosemarie “Bubu” Andres, EO Global Chair, FY2018/2019 , an EO Philippines member and co-founder of Candy Corner , the number one source of quality candies and chocolates in the Philippines. The entrepreneurial journey can be lonely. You’re leading a company, walking an uncharted path without anyone else in the world who can comprehend your unique experience, worries and frustrations.

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

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.

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The Importance of Local Media to Boost Startups in Rising Cities

Revolution

In recent weeks, several major media organizations, including Verizon (Huffington Post, Yahoo, AOL), Buzzfeed and Gannett, the owners of more than 120 local media organizations across the country, announced thousands of newsroom layoffs in an attempt to reduce costs. It’s the Gannett cuts that worry me the most. As reported by Slate from a study from researchers at the University of North Carolina, “We have lost about 20 percent of local newspapers in the United States since 2004, and at least 9

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Top 10 Reasons to Benchmark Your Business Incubator or Accelerator

UBI Global

What is benchmarking? Benchmarking is a comprehensive process that is used by the top performing business incubators and accelerators in the world. The data that UBI Global collects is invaluable to both new programs just getting started and to well-established, institutional programs that want to remain abreast of the latest paths to success. Benchmarking means comparing one’s processes […].

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A Deep Dive into What Has Really Changed in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

I’ve heard a lot of people question whether there is too much money in venture capital chasing too few great deals. “We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. “Valuations are out of control” is the mantra of others. Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venture capital all together. Every year I try to answer the question of “what has changed in the Venture Capital industry” and this year my colleague Chang Xu and I took a deep dive through the data and

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The Tech Issue that Matters Most in NYC

This is going to be BIG.

The headlines in the tech and startup world have not been good over the last couple of years. As it turns out, the “move fast in break things” culture was itself pretty broken—full of discrimination and harassment. On top of that, the rise of tech is exacerbating wealth inequality, creating some serious data privacy issues, and allowing hate and misinformation to grow rampant on its platforms.

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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How Battery Entrepreneurs Learned the Power of Environmentally Responsible Business

Venture Well

With the right training and support, battery innovators can hold to their environmentally responsible values even in this super-charged competitive space. The post How Battery Entrepreneurs Learned the Power of Environmentally Responsible Business appeared first on VentureWell.

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The Best Countries in Europe for Startups—and Why

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Written for EO by Erin Yurday. Erin Yurday is the founder and CEO of NimbleFins , a startup that aims to educate consumers with data-driven research so they can make the best financial decisions for their individual situation. . While any great business starts with an idea—that “aha!” moment—we all know there’s a lot more to running a successful startup than just the initial inspiration.

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Why We Invested in CLEAR

Revolution

In 1989, the second part of the blockbuster Back to the Future trilogy introduced a version of 2015 where individuals could use fingerprints to unlock doors, pay for taxis, and make donations to save broken clock towers. While fingerprint recognition technology existed when the movie was made, it would take more than 20 years before Apple’s iPhone 5S, the first iPhone with Touch ID, made it part of consumers’ everyday routines and marked a turning point for the mass adoption of biometric technol

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Should Your Startup Differentiate On Pricing?

Tomasz Tunguz

Startups are innovation machines. They identify market opportunities, develop novel products and go out to change the world. Some companies want to change the world in one dimension: a better product or a disruptive go-to-market. Others want to innovate in every dimension and re-invent every discipline from pricing to marketing to support to customer success.

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

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How to Be a Good Board Member

Both Sides of the Table

I have been writing a series on how startup boards get selected, who sits on them and what to avoid. I will also delve into how to prepare for them, how to make the meeting effective and how to best follow up to make sure people take action. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash In response to one of my posts I saw this great Tweet by Bilal Zuberi and it resonated.

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Five Questions for Vetting an Investment in a New or Emerging VC Fund

This is going to be BIG.

While most of the money that goes into VC funds comes from institutions that are highly experienced in the asset class, some family offices and high net worth individuals also invest in VC. They’re trying to get exposure and diversification at the same time, while potentially seeing co-investment deal flow. A lot of VC fund pitches—and I know this because I used to vet VCs for a living as an institutional limited partner at a pension fund—sound the same.

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Blind Passion for Your Invention? Time for Tough Love

Venture Well

Innovators need tough love to help them balance passion with data to ensure their invention effectively solves a real-world problem. The post Blind Passion for Your Invention? Time for Tough Love appeared first on VentureWell.

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When Tragedy Strikes

Entrepreneurs' Organization

An accidental entrepreneur. That’s how cofounder of retail company Blue Illusion , Donna Guest , describes herself. Being a business owner was not something that she envisioned when she married her husband and business partner, Danny Guest. Becoming a CEO of a company was not something she contemplated before they started the business 20 years ago.

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PE Mastery: CAPTARGET's Playbook for Quality Lead Flow

CAPTARGET presents a masterclass in M&A deal sourcing. Learn to cast a wide net, embracing seller self-identification. Consistency is the linchpin: keep the origination process steady for a reliable flow of opportunities. Diversify your tactics, employing various tools and vendors. Tech matters! Understand DNS settings, domain authority, and brand presence for optimal outreach.

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Black Entrepreneurs and the Embracing of Coworking Space

Turnkey Office Space

It’s Black History month, and a great time to shed light on how black entrepreneurs are embracing and thriving in the coworking space culture. While it’s true that ethnic diversity and cultural integration have become distinguishing features of coworking space, black startups in particular have been flocking to coworking spaces across the country.

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The Story Behind Our Investment In Fiddler Labs

Haystack

This is the story of how we invested in Fiddler Labs. At the beginning of 2018, we almost invested in a startup with two strong founders. To make a long and private story short, on the morning I was about to call the founders to let them know I was in, they decided to amicably part ways. I was stunned, but also relieved it happened then and not much later.

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Who Should be on Your Startup Board?

Both Sides of the Table

One of the things that founders have the most angst about is whom they should have on their board and at what stage of the business. This is smart because amazing board members can be transformative with important advice and access and can also help attract other great board members (and team members). Bad board members can make business very unpleasant.

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A New Architecture for Next-Generation Software Companies: Announcing Mattermost

Tomasz Tunguz

The first wave of SaaS is 20 years old. Today, the SaaS model dominates. But we’re seeing the emergence of a different type of next-generation software company. A new wave of companies that is responding to the changing needs of customers by innovating their architecture. Very simply, they liberate the database from the application. In license software, the database ran alongside the application on-prem.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr