A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

I remember about fifteen years ago, a well-known VC said to me “you need to sell a company within a few years of the founder leaving. Companies can’t sustain their innovation after a founder leaves.” ” I told that VC that my experience has been different on that measure and that I did not agree.

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Founder Bounty

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Time and time again i hear about founders that have bigger egos then anything else rejecting offers from top tier VC's (like YC ) and eventually leading thier companies to fail. If you do get and offer from top US VC's take them, dont be greedy and stay humble. Dont have a big ego.

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APRIL 13, 2022

Founders seem to get that. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean trust in the sense that VCs think founders are just going to get a fake passport and move to Fiji, or that investors are secretly plotting to take over the company. VCs aren’t experts at every aspect of a startup at the same level across the board.

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JUNE 5, 2015

” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note. So how DOES a VC think about financings at early stages? If you’re a solo founder and haven’t built out your team or engineers I’m likely to want 15+%.

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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. In fact, the only founder I've ever seen completely run the table for a multi-million dollar seed round based off of a Powerpoint is Chantel Waterbury of chloe + isabel.

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JUNE 16, 2014

How long does it take from first meeting a VC to getting cash in the bank? It''s also not the best way to create a helpful syndicate of investors that share the founder''s vision for the company. If all my deals came as intros from trusted connections that I know for years versus at founder pitch events that''s interesting data.

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JULY 16, 2014

There''s been some writing about how VCs and founders interact with each other and it inspired me to take a step back and reflect on what my role is supposed to be with regards to the investments I make and the founders I deal with. Here''s what I came up with. Venture Capital & Technology'

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 23, 2021

I realized a long time ago that the VC’s customer is the founder/CEO/portfolio company and that our investors (called LPs in VC speak) are our “shareholders” That was a very defining moment for me and has clarified what matters the most in a VC firm. That can work too.

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AUGUST 25, 2023

It’s your job as a founder to find out the specific risk associated with that attribute and to find out if the reason given is the only reason. Does the VC think that a designer needs to be on the team from day one if you’re going to build a better version of Instagram? Let’s first talk about the definition of a co-founder.

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APRIL 6, 2020

But I have been in close contact with the NVCA, many of the major law firms and many of the major VC firms. Am I ineligible since I’m VC-backed? There is nothing in the rules that state that VC-backed businesses are ineligible. I am not claiming to be the world expert on this. shouldn’t I? The short answer is “no.”

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MAY 30, 2018

VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. It’s not uncommon for a VC to ask you how much capital you’ve raised and what the post-money valuation was on your last round. So why does a VC ask you?

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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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FEBRUARY 14, 2018

If you haven’t yet heard about Female Founder Office Hours it is an initiative you should be aware of whether you’re male, female or any other gender identify. For the LA event, for example, they will not only have a selection of great LA VCs but also 10+ senior VC women from the SF Bay Area will be coming down for it.

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The Seraf Compass

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Alicia Castillo Holley is an active angel investor in Silicon Valley and the Founder and CEO of The Wealthing VC Club, a boutique investment group of accredited investors that fills rounds led by VCs. This profile is the eighth in a series of interviews highlighting the work of interesting female investors.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

The Dreamit team has said it before, raising money from a VC is a lot like sales. co-founder). This shows that you’re comfortable at “trial closing” and the type of founder who actively looks for the “obstacles to sale.” It set you miles apart from other founders and quickly demonstrate your sales skills.

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MARCH 21, 2025

This is what I know it feels like for a lot of founders and investors alikefloating in the rarified air of extremely successful people defined by their outcomes. I cant tell you how many times I got announced as a successful VC when I was introduced on a panel or sat across the room from a potential limited partner telling them I was.

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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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MAY 12, 2014

Plus, when I look at my risks--is the risk that a legal term will shoot me in the foot or that these two founders and a prototype run this business into the ground. When a bigger fund is in a round with me, they''re going to look at the legals, too--so I''m generally fine with whatever they go for.

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Revolution

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

One is “tentpole company,” or a category-defining startup that helps put their hometown on the map, both for investors and future generations of founders. Internally, we’ve begun using the term “founder-market-geography fit” to describe this idea. What is Founder-Market-Geography Fit? Let’s get into it.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Shivani Gupta, EO Queensland, multi-business founder, author, speaker and coach Profit from profit My big learning from EO Malaysia member Fong Leng Wong is: Profit from profit. My first female mentor was the incredible Janine Allis , founder of Boost Juice. Express your view in a calm and professional way.

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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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OCTOBER 24, 2021

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.” Founders get “happy ears”. The ecosystem is full of bad advice from founders that couldn’t raise.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 15, 2020

I wrote yesterday , about the quarterly numbers for VC investing activity: If this was a student coming home with a report card, it would be straight As. The third quarter total also amounts to a 48% drop in funding from Q2, when female founders received $841 million across 132 deals. It feels like positive change is happening.

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FEBRUARY 21, 2019

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. No current non-accredited founders, please. Could you have led any of these deals? If you’re not sure if you qualify, e-mail me.

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OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. And my friend and Invoca co-founder Colin Kelley has done both.

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JUNE 22, 2020

One of the most difficult conversations I have with founders is when they haven’t quite given me enough of a story for me to make a proper evaluation. A VC’s default is “no”, so without enough information to be convincing, it’s going to wind up being a pass. To a VC, $50,000 a pre-sale isn’t really that much.

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OCTOBER 3, 2016

Why do VC's get such a bad rap? That's literally your baby--and 98% of the time, a VC will tell you that your baby is ugly. Forget the fact that a VC's job is more akin to that of a NASCAR passenger, perhaps occasionally pointing out a track hazard or cheering the driver on, but certainly not the main component of success.

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MAY 26, 2022

“Personal Branding” The term is fingernails on a chalkboard-level cringe for many of the best founders—mostly because it feels most of the people who spend time building their personal brand don’t actually have much there there behind it. Unfortunately, this has real consequences for founders. So how can founders differentiate?

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JUNE 9, 2020

While I got some very kind words on my recent writings , I heard from some founders that didn't feel like they got treated fairly—specifically around feeling patronized or dismissed—and that I wasn't showing enough action to improve on that. I try to get back to everyone—which is something not all VCs do.

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NOVEMBER 15, 2020

Not in the “founder friendly” culture of tech anyway. An examination of several high profile stories this past year about female CEO issues lays bare the other reason: It’s not “founder friendly.” It’s male founder friendly. Founders have to reckon with that. Travis should hire her back?? He should have been long gone.

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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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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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JULY 8, 2019

Just the immediate priorities seem to take up more than one person’s potential working hours—so it’s no surprise that when it comes to something like social media, many founders have trouble making it a priority. The consequences of failing to position a founder’s profile aren’t always obvious—and it’s usually all about missed opportunities.

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Revolution

MARCH 8, 2023

population, but in 2022, companies with solely female founders garnered just 2% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups. The long and short of it: Female founders face systemic barriers to founding, funding, and scaling their businesses. Women represent 50.5% of the U.S. That ticked up to 15.4%

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MAY 16, 2024

Then, they need to figure out a way to project that brand up above the venture community, like a Bat signal calling for the best founders to come and pitch them. This is something I talk about a lot with my VC coaching clients. The question is what to focus on. Especially early on, that’s ideal.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 15, 2020

This is a theme I have come back to many times over the last decade but in the wake of all of the headlines about high profile founders, VCs, and companies leaving the bay area, I thought I would return to it. I am not saying that founders will stop traveling to raise money, although I think that may stick post-pandemic.

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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). Upfront Ventures VC Industry'

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