This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 3, 2016

That was a question posed to me by a new analyst at a venture capital fund. Admittedly, I finished this person's sentence after their long pause. but the word "jerks" was agreed to as the direction they were taking the question. While there are lots and lots of really kind, generous people working in venture capital--the recently retired Howard Morgan, Hunter Walk, Brad Feld, and Karin Klein for example--it's really tough to argue that there isn't widespread jerkery.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 12, 2016

Today it has been announced that I’m leading a $15 million funding round in Tact , a new generation of Enterprise Software company along with other investors including Microsoft Ventures and previous investors Accel and Redpoint Rather than just waxing lyrically about how great the company is I thought I’d provide some context about why I invested and also about a fundamental change I see in the coming years in the way enterprise software is used.

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Gust

MARCH 21, 2016

With startup growth up 61% since 2014 and more investment programs emerging, it can be overwhelming for founders to know just where to jump in. As the most startup-friendly accelerator on the planet, MassChallenge has helped 835 startup companies around the world, who have raised over $1.1 billion in funding and created over 6,500 jobs. We have seen startups at.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

By Davide Frau, EO South Florida. It was midnight on a Saturday when my phone rang. It was one of my business partners, Barnabas Carrega. After the previous 72 hours—which were beyond grueling—I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone. That Thursday, we decided to pull the plug on our first promotional event set to take place during the Sony Open in Miami, Florida, USA.

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For Entrepreneurs

OCTOBER 17, 2016

For the fifth year in a row, we’re proud to work with Pacific Crest Securities, a SaaS-focused investment banking firm, to share results from a survey of 336 SaaS companies. The survey represents deep benchmarking data and insights on growth and operation of SaaS companies. Many thanks to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in the.

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Venture Hacks

JANUARY 8, 2016

Some highlights from Ed Catmull’s Creativity Inc. Ed is the President of Pixar. “If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem. “The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal. “The truth is, the cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. “Rules can simplify life for managers, but they can be demeaning to the 95 percent who behave well.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 19, 2016

It means a lot to me to find financial opportunities investing in companies that I can be really proud of--education companies like Tinybop and Tinkergarten , or companies at the forefront of fair labor practices like Homer Logistics. There are others that haven't launched that I'm equally as proud and excited about--and now one more has launched. I'm thrilled to be an investor in The Wing --a Home Base for Women on Their Way.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 4, 2016

One of my favorite phrases is "performing inception". Inception is one of my favorite movies and I love the idea of meticulously planning out the placement of an idea in someone else's head. That's basically what founders have to do when they fundraise, because you'll never be more successful with an investor who thought it was their brilliant idea to invest in your company, not yours.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 17, 2016

This weekend, Heathens by Twenty One Pilots has been stuck in my head. It has such a great sound--and I wanted to figure out what else I could listen to that sounded like it. I don't mean bands that are liked by other people who like Twenty One Pilots. I literally mean songs that sound like it. or maybe just remixed versions of it. I wanted to engage with music, but I can't, because I don't have the ability to manipulate the "source code" of the song.

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startup

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 28, 2016

I just read an article about Bonobos --or was it a press release. I'm not completely sure. If you've met Andy Dunn, you'll know why that's going to be a fine line for any reporter, because it's nearly impossible to have a conversation with him without getting wrapped up in a story optimized to share. And damn, does he have his story and the ability to perform inception with it down cold.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 3, 2016

Classpass is nothing short of phenomenon--and it's particularly noticeable to me because I passed on its seed round. In my defense, I passed when it was Classtivity, a completely different model focused searching for classes. Obviously, the pivot worked out for them. Still, it's a bit frustrating to see them end their "Unlimited" option to the chagrin of many of their users--just a few months after raising their prices.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

I can't think of a single time when a white man came to pitch me and I told him his fundraising plans weren't aggressive enough. Yet this is a message I'm giving to women and people of color all the time. It's not that this latter group isn't aggressive enough--after all, they're ditching everything else they could to to start companies. Something else is at play.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Yesterday, I got caught up in letting my frustration over the election boil over onto Twitter, and it's definitely not the first time. It made me ask the following question: Were we better off in 2016 having Facebook and Twitter around? I talked about it with a few people. One brought up #blacklivesmatter and while I hope some important issues were highlighted, I really don't see these platforms bringing about positive change in the real world.

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financing

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Many startup businesses – tech or otherwise – fail. In our industry we applaud the efforts for entrepreneurs to have tried and we know that today’s failure can bring the experience for tomorrow’s success. We also know that even though many of us who are experienced in startup successes & failures look at businesses and say, “That will never work” (as many people said about Uber) or “You can’t make any money in that business” (as many said

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2016

I know the title “I promise you one of the most meaningful days of your life” sounds grandiose but I mean it and I hope you’ll read through to the end and choose to take one small, totally free action, that will change your life and likely those of others. On September 10th of this year I spent an entire day in California State Prison with people who had committed felonies and worked with them on business plans to help them create legal enterprise upon their release as part of Defy Ventures 6-mo

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. The news blogs will cover the what, how and how much but I want to focus on the “why” and try to be instructive of what I think makes for a great A-round startup.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2016

Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job of asking, yet again, for money. Every time you ask for money you’re faced with the possible of feeling literally and figuratively like a failure.

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technology

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy. I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 11, 2016

Over the weekend, Rent the Runway held an event for its Project Entrepreneur initiative, which brought together over 100 female entrepreneurs looking to get education and advice on how to take their businesses to the next step. Unfortunately, one of the panelists, Skinny Girl vodka's Bethenny Frankel, told an African American founder in the audience that if she wanted to raise funding, that she should go out and hire a white guy to be the face of her business.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. Valuing any company can be difficult because it requires a degree of forecasting future growth & competition and ultimately the profits of the organization. And two big changes have happened that are widely known – in the past quarter the value of some very high profile companies such as LinkedIn and Twitter have fallen substanti

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca For the first 5 years or so after I became a VC I didn’t talk much about what I thought a VC should be excellent at since frankly I wasn’t sure. I was mostly doing my job and trying to figure out how to be better every day. After a decade on the job I’ve started to speak more openly when newer industry colleagues now ask me what I’ve learned.

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opportunity

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2016

MakeSpace , the leading provider of next-generation storage for consumers, today announced an additional $17.5 million in funding on TechCrunch led by Harmony Partners and Upfront Ventures to double its footprint of 3 cities (New York, Chicago & Washington DC) to 6 in 2016. We raised this capital in what has increasingly become a difficult market for fund raising so I’d like to share with you some details on how we get it done.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. When I publicly Tweeted that all companies should be gross margin positive many people pointed out that Amazon wasn’t profitable for many years.

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 25, 2016

I believe in solvable problems, but that you can't make progress on them until everyone involved accepts responsibility for causing them. I believe that if you aim for compromise, you will be less successful than if you aim for creativity. I believe that if you treat people like you believe they can be better than they are, they will be. I believe that if you're not doing everything you can to get them there, they'll fail without you.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2016

There is much talk these days that startup valuations have decreased and may continue to do so and that the amount of time it takes to fund raise may take longer. As I have pointed out in previous posts , 91% of VCs surveyed believe prices are declining (30% believe substantially) and 77% believe that funding will take longer than it has in the past.

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