A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 10, 2020

Many founders want to do SAFE note financings for their early rounds to save time and money. My response to that is “let’s do a priced round, we can use a standard financing form we both like, we won’t use a lawyer on our side, and we can close in a week.” Here are Orrick’s forms.

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NOVEMBER 29, 2014

This week I wrote about obsessive and competitive founders and how this forms the basis of what I look for when I invest. And that’s what differentiates founders and early employees. My starting salary when I joined a VC fund as a partner at the age of 39 (and after 2 exits)? I had never been a VC before.

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SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

And the loosening of federal monetary policies, particularly in the US, has pushed more dollars into the venture ecosystems at every stage of financing. What Has Changed in Financing? However, to be a great VC you have to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. two founders in a garage?—?(HP

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MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can.

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MAY 13, 2018

This is part of a series of advice for founders who need to raise money from venture capitalists. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. This is where most founders err. Same with VC.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 3, 2020

The partner at the fund, the VC, gets to do the fun part—the meeting with founders, vetting deals, negotiating, helping, etc. In fact, that number is probably even more than the average VC fund has the bandwidth to make. You get, if you’re lucky, a Powerpoint and some financials once a quarter. So what’s the point?

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 6, 2015

BBV has talked proudly about its large number of female founders. When you think back to your time at USV, FRC and BBV, can you identify a time you passed on a founder because of a blind spot or unconscious bias you possessed at the time and if so, what did you do going forward to not make the mistake again? Hard to believe.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 13, 2019

My partner Nick put together a deck outlining USV’s approach to crypto investing earlier this year and we have been using it with founders and investors since then. We expect we will see continued innovation in the open finance (finance 2.0) sector in the next few years while the open data (web 3.0)

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

Every time he opens his mouth about founder diversity, he seems completely out of his league to address the topic. The biggest question I think VC''s face right now is whether or not, in the future, the best founders will look and act like the best founders of the past. That''s less than 10%. That''s 25%.

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Dream It

DECEMBER 19, 2019

million Series A financing round led by San Francisco-based Builders VC. Chris Molaro, Founder of NeuroFlow. Partnering with Builders VC aligns us with a team of industry experts who understand both the challenges and opportunities in transforming the way behavioral health is addressed and treated.”

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JULY 27, 2014

Scott and I agree on nearly everything: The VC structure is changing and there appears to be a bifurcation into small & large VCs with an impact on “traditionally sized” VCs. The only point we didn’t seem totally aligned on was what we happening to the “middle of the VC market.”

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MAY 24, 2021

The culture is driven by the 20-something irreverent founder with huge technical chops who in a “David vs. Goliath” mythology take on the titans of industry and wins. But markets have changed and I think investors, founders and experienced executives who want to join later-stage startups can all benefit from playing the long game.

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SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

” From the hyperbolic Jason Calacanis weighing in that “The petty VC’s did everything to deride [Naval, the co-founder of AngelList]” as though the industry was collectively s g its pants that AngelList was going to put us out of business. This is the same way VC firms, by the way. founder fighting.

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NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). Wonderful human being who is civically engaged, mother of 3, mentorer of younger founders, hard worker and arguer extraordinaire (so says her current Twitter bio). Kara has worked in finance in Boston, NYC and Silicon Valley. Upfront Ventures VC Industry'

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OCTOBER 7, 2014

No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

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SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

“Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? ” This is a frequent theme of mine when asked to speak to audience about the VC industry. Founders will continue to take the “growth at all options” path that leads to privacy & trust creep at places like Quora. Growth, again. Grow or die.

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FEBRUARY 12, 2019

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. why the hell has seed financing declined so much in the past 3 years?? So What Impact Did the Drop in Tech Founding Costs Have on VC?

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2022

For most founders, fundraising is a struggle. I’m a straight white dude who grew up in NYC and worked in finance. I’m the on-paper poster child for “who can get VC dollars”. What’s that investor going to be like in a board meeting when you as a female founder need their support or worse, actually their vote?

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

That’s what every VC is telling their portfolio companies these days. If you don’t realize that, just imagine you’re a VC fund with some dry powder in the second half of 2023. The one question every VC needs to be able to answer on the way to getting to a “yes” is, “Can this return a big chunk of my fund one day?”

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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. I first met Andrew Stalbow , the founder & CEO of Seriously in August of 2013.

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DECEMBER 11, 2022

Between 2006–2008 I sold both companies that I had started and became a VC. SEEING THINGS FROM THE VC SIDE OF THE TABLE While I was a VC in 2007 & 2008 those were dead years because the market again evaporated due the the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). THE VC VALUATION GOD Valuation obsession wasn’t restricted to startups.

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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. It’s easy to think the role of a VC is to have strong opinions about markets, trends, tech dynamics and so forth. The role of VC is sparring partner.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 19, 2021

Over the last 18 months, the early-stage financing market has seen dramatic changes characterized by these three things: A shift from in-person fundraising to virtual fundraising A reduction in financing process timelines from months to weeks A continued increase in the amount of capital available for early stage companies.

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Founders Coop

MAY 18, 2020

As operators, we were lucky to raise from some pretty amazing VC role models, people like Brad Feld at Foundry Group, Ethan Kurzweil at Bessemer Venture Partners, and Karan Mehandru at Trinity Ventures. But along the way we experienced many of the behaviors Fred’s post talks about, so we know how awful the experience of raising VC can be.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 11, 2021

David Teten is founder of Versatile VC and writes periodically at teten.com and @dteten. 15 steps to fundraising a new VC or private equity fund. Stéphane Nasser is co-founder of OpenVC , an open-source initiative to collect and analyze all VC theses. VC theses are often so vague that they’re meaningless.

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FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. And you need to be careful about giving up control to cofounders as much as VCs. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Hire admin / office management after you raise a reasonable size VC round.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 4, 2022

The founders bootstrapped Spleet for 18 months before conducting a family and friend round of $265,000. million seed funding led by Los Angeles–based early-stage VC firm MaC Venture Capital. The investment will see Spleet scale its products: the flagship residential rent management and rent financing solution.

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MARCH 24, 2014

Helping companies get to next financing round successfully: I was just beginning this phase in Sept 2010 and said so. I’ve now been involved with many other successful foll0w-on financings. “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. Sourcing high-quality leads : 9/10. Since then?

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 31, 2020

So today, I will write about 2020 in the context of tech/startups/VC/crypto. And they finance the trend that they are directionally correct about. There is no question that crypto is in yet another speculative bubble, but like I said, it is speculative bubbles that allow emerging technologies to go mainstream and finance themselves.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 5, 2014

If you need to introduce yourself to a VC firm, you''re probably not getting the job. VC firms are going back to being mostly partner driven shops, where dealflow and decisions stay up top. VC firms are going back to being mostly partner driven shops, where dealflow and decisions stay up top. That''s a benefit to the VC firm.

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NOVEMBER 9, 2014

We all can intuit the benefits to founders of these trends so there’s little reason to elaborate. How founders get screwed on convertible notes. Fundraising / Negotiations Startup Lessons VC Industry' We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. What is less understood are the consequences of these changes.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 30, 2019

We are not opposed to convertible and SAFE notes and will not let the form of security the founder wants to use get between us and investing in a company that we like. But I continue to think that convertible and SAFE notes are not in the best interests of the founder(s). They obfuscate the amount of dilution the founder(s) is taking.

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MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. Ask your VC to send a critical email to a contact.

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OCTOBER 12, 2014

In the old days there weren’t many fights about whether angels would take their prorata rights in financing rounds. Plus, many VC rounds traditionally didn’t guarantee angels prorata rights unless they were “major investors” which often means they wrote large checks in the angel round. Thus begins the dance.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 2, 2015

Most founders barely have anything that looks like anything at this point, and most of them haven''t done this before. The founders I backed aren''t VCs (well, except Dave ) so I don''t know if that is such a great signal. The founders I backed aren''t VCs (well, except Dave ) so I don''t know if that is such a great signal.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

For most of my career as a VC, the IPO has been the holy grail. I don’t take as much offense to this situation as others in the VC business have. I have viewed it as a mutually beneficial relationship between the top banks, VC firms, and the founders and CEOs who lead our portfolio companies. We will see.

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OCTOBER 30, 2014

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. I said simply, “That’s the most ambitious project I’ve seen since I became a VC.” Through many meetings discussing strategy, approach, recruiting, financing, etc.

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