Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

founders, marketers, investors?—?and Trust, which today has announced a $9 million financing (Upfront is an investor), is a platform designed to help make the most of marketing investment by providing both analytics and a community of likeminded executives to share what’s working, and what’s not, across platforms.

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Both Sides of the Table

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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500

APRIL 28, 2020

Long before diversity and inclusion became buzzwords, we decided to make venture capital inclusive from day one at 500 Startups. The post Why Investing in Female Founders Matters Now More Than Ever appeared first on 500 Startups. Since 2010, we have expressed our commitment to those values in multiple ways.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. It forces the founder to spend time in front of customers.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

It just seemed like a fitting title for a company built around narrative by a founder who used to write stories for a living. It's a story that just hit a milestone--a $4mm round of venture funding that I'm ecstatic to say Brooklyn Bridge Ventures just led. He certainly would have been my first co-investor call.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Revolution Ventures Invests in Oula, the Maternity Care Startup Combining the Best of Obstetrics and Midwifery Oula will use the $28M Series B to open additional clinics and launch new services. With plans to open new clinics in 2025, the company is poised to become the largest U.S. employer of midwives.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. Our last fund we raised was in 2012 and we began investing it in April of 2012.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Today we’re announcing that my partner Kara Nortman is becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to welcome her to her new role. and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. So mostly we just had to listen to customer feedback from founders, VCs and LPs.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

Yesterday, I met with a founder with an interesting model who was raising $400k to bring the finishing touches to her product to make it customer-ready. First off, the vast majority of venture dollars goes to white men. This blog post is not about debating if "enough" diverse founders get funding--whatever that might mean.

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Dream It

JANUARY 13, 2021

The venture capital screening call is an important step to get right in due diligence. In this Dreamit Dose, associates Alana Hill and I, Elliot Levy , offer five things we wish founders knew after screening over 1,000 startups in the last year. It’s honestly refreshing when we hear a founder that’s no BS and succinct during the Q/A.

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Revolution

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

In 2017, we partnered with iconic leaders in American business to turn the thesis we developed on the road — that great companies can start and scale anywhere when given a chance — into an investment vehicle. In the last decade, we’ve socialized several Rise of the Rest-isms to describe investments that check those boxes.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

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.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

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. 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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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

What Cham rarely tells people – he’s both private and humble – is that he started making some small co-investments with me in tech firms starting with Maker Studios where he was one of the earliest investors. They make a great pair.

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Dream It

APRIL 2, 2019

Press Release The venture fund and growth-focused accelerator accepted the cohort from a field of nearly 2,000 pre-Series A companies NEW YORK CITY, NY — April 2, 2019 — Dreamit Ventures, an early stage venture fund and growth-focused accelerator, announced its latest batch of startups this week.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. We are excited to share the news that we have raised $650 million across three vehicles to allow us to continue making investments for many years ahead.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Since the beginning of modern venture capital investing — a relatively nascent asset class — the industry has been biased toward funding what it knows best: founders with familiar demographics (white, male) in familiar geographies (Silicon Valley).

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

co-founder). If they hesitate, respond with, “Okay, can you tell me the 2 or 3 things you would need to see in order to invest?” This shows that you’re comfortable at “trial closing” and the type of founder who actively looks for the “obstacles to sale.” Say something like, “We hope you want to invest and join us on our journey.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Most VCs did well academically and had enough career success that a venture firm was willing to give them an investment role or they were able to raise their own fund. We then help surround founders with other talent who want to join important causes but don’t have the startup idea themselves. The role of VC is sparring partner.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 7, 2015

After checking out The Information's "open dataset" on diversity in venture capital , I felt pretty disappointed. Who is actually building a portfolio whose founders reflect the diversity of the greater population? A whopping 17 of the 32 companies (53%) have founders that fit into those groups. Not directly, anyway.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 4, 2018

It’s an entirely fair question—and the risk is that limited partners, founders, or other VCs might not want to work with me because I’m vocal about my political views. I suspect, though, there are even some founders out there who could be put off by the things I write and probably how I write them. We get judged all the time.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 22, 2018

In almost every single investment I’ve ever made, I can think of a singular moment in my relationship with a founder that, no matter what came before or what might come after, defined our relationship. Not only that, but the venture community is extremely small when it comes to investor reputations.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Via TechCrunch by Arman Tabatabai: Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries. Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020.

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Dream It

APRIL 21, 2020

So the question remains: what is the appropriate amount of funding founders should request? This framework helps founders position their fundraising targets and avoid red flags with investors. Here are some common red flags for venture investors: Red Flag #1 : Ask isn’t tied to specific fundable milestones. Don’t do this.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? Startups should know how VCs work. startup) per month.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Today's top founders will undoubtedly start something new in the future, but they won't make up the majority of innovators going forward--just as prior generations of venture backed founders don't make up a majority of those who are succeeding today. I didn’t say venture investing was easy—but at least we got a look.)

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures. The initial investment certainly wasn’t a consensus decision at Upfront, but that’s how we invest. In our industry we always talk about funding big ideas or funding things with more meaning. We loved the idea. With conviction.

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The Seraf Compass

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Melissa Bradley is the Founder and Managing Partner of 1863 Ventures, an investment fund that accelerates New Majority entrepreneurs from high potential to high growth by bridging entrepreneurship and racial equity. This profile is the sixth in a series of interviews highlighting the work of interesting impact investors.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 9, 2020

If you’re a white professional in venture, you might feel uncomfortable tweeting or blogging about race. Besides, if you’re not comfortable with making mistakes and learning from them—what are you even doing in venture? Founders from communities of color are less likely to have personal wealth to fall back on.

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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. I'm thrilled to be an investor in The Wing --a Home Base for Women on Their Way.

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Source Link

APRIL 14, 2021

From Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who ran a prosperous dressmaking business that eventually led to her designing and sewing dresses for Mary Todd Lincoln, to Anne Wojcicki, founder of genetic testing and analysis firm 23andMe, women have proved they have what it takes to reach the top of the entrepreneurial mountain.

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500

JUNE 9, 2020

Supply chains have been disrupted, businesses have had to close or operate at limited capacity for months, and even founders have had to expand their fundraising timeframes as we saw in our 2020 Female Founders Data Report. The post Our Investment Framework Post-COVID-19 appeared first on 500 Startups.

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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. 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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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 17, 2020

I woke up to a dream this morning where I was playing a game that was very similar to Turntable.fm , a failed effort to create a social music experience that had a moment back in 2011 and that I had invested in via USV. I met the founders and was happy for them. Investments that don’t work haunt me. Then I woke up.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 24, 2021

In the beginning of my venture career, I knew of a firm that was involved in a highly competitive funding round that they ultimately failed to win. For years, he went on to advise other founders about how to generate VC interest, which really could have amounted to, “Be a warm body with a pulse in a sector that firm got shut out of a deal in.”

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Dream It

MARCH 6, 2020

Jeff Berman is General Partner at Camber Creek , one of the first venture funds dedicated to real estate technology and the built world. The team owns, operates and manages over 150 million square feet of real estate, making Camber Creek one of the biggest value-add venture partners for real estate tech startups.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 4, 2016

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. Who invests is also important--these are people who want to make money, but also be seen investing in the "hot" companies.

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