Dream It

MARCH 6, 2020

Dreamit Urbantech Managing Director Andrew Ackerman recently sat down with Jeff for a wide-ranging conversation on real estate tech, and a large part of that conversation focused on what founders can do to successfully raise venture capital from real estate tech investors. Does the founder know how to sell into real estate?

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real estate pitching VC opportunity 406

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.

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venture capital ventures capital consumer retail 359

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 10, 2015

The last thing you want as either a founder or even a VC is to have an investor get stuck with you when you're not on the same page about expectations. You trust me with your money and I get to do the fun part--working with founders. So here's all the reasons I told him he shouldn't be in: 1) Fund investing is boring.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. You’d be surprised how many firms are “dictator VCs” – even those that don’t formally acknowledge it internally. ” Some firms are collegiate.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Picking a VC is hard. So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Most VCs are book smart. VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. You want a VC who will spar with you but then STFU and let you get on with things.

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VC advice board leadership 364

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.

venture capital 367

venture capital capital ventures VC 367

This is going to be BIG.

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. Venture Capital & Technology' Here''s what I came up with.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. I know I can’t be in every deal and I know that the easy part of being a VC is writing the first check in a deal. Co-founder discontent. They worry too much about missing out on a deal.

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. But it will be patiently deployed, waiting for a cohort of founders who aren’t artificially clinging to 2021 valuation metrics. What is a VC To Do?

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

Non VC Growth Rounds. The other major trend of 2012–2015 was the entrance of “non VCs” into late-stages of venture capital , which mostly consisted of hedge funds, mutual funds, corporate investors, sovereign wealth funds and even LPs doing direct deals. VC Infighting. VCs can afford to get a few decisions wrong.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 271

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

You run X amount of capital and Y percentage of that is allocated to venture capital. For the VC that means if you're returning money to your institutional investors, that's about all you need to worry about. Either way, VC funds aren't really built around creating much of an experience for their Limited Partners.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 284

This is going to be BIG.

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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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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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

*. What is the role of a VC for entrepreneurs? I suppose it can be different for every founder and for different VCs but I’d like to offer you some context on what I think it is and it isn’t. They are unique to you and not to each other situation that VC has faced. ” I responded. How can we know better?

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

It’s not about being rich, it’s about repeatedly building value What some people think will happen when you become a founder | source I love the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Let’s tastefully call this phenomenon: Rich Founder, Poor Founder. Path 1: Venture-backed startup 90% chance of $0. Most founders end up owning 5%-20%.

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founder VC venture capital entrepreneurship 144

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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Both Sides of the Table

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. The NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) Guidelines are below. shouldn’t I?

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VC peer-to-peer startup advice 279

This is going to be BIG.

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. Venture Capital & Technology' 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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VC venture capital capital ventures 419

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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Both Sides of the Table

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.

founder 256

founder peer-to-peer VC mentorship 256

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. However, in this moment, I think one''s career in venture capital depends on changing your perspective. Of the 20 teams, only half count an engineer as a founder or co-founder.

venture capital 406

venture capital VC ventures capital 406

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

I believe that the next generation of top companies are far more likely to be founded by people not on VC radars today. That believe has not only translated into the most diverse portfolio run by an investor who looks like me, with over 50% of the teams including diverse founders, but also into top quartile returns in our last fund.

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venture capital communities ventures capital 239

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. Having a better overall portfolio of venture capital by adding funds into the mix. In fact, that number is probably even more than the average VC fund has the bandwidth to make.

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VC angel investing mix-use opportunity 258

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

I’m a female founder. I don’t have a technical co-founder. These are all of the things I heard from a founder that I recently backed. So what about all of the above statements—things that founders widely hold to be true barriers to fundraising? Or that venture capital is a meritocracy? This isn’t surprising.

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advice pitching venture capital VC 446

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every potentially good VC previously worked for Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman. Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. Venture capitalists play an important role in burgeoning ecosystems. So what about a Techstars-like program for new VCs?

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accelerator mentorship VC incubation 368

Both Sides of the Table

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.

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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. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

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investing investment VC venture capital 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 24, 2015

I recently interviewed Matt Mazzeo of Lowercase Capital. By now most of you know that Chris Sacca invested in what is now thought to be one of the best performing VC funds of all time having invested an $8.4 million fund in: Uber, Instagram, Docker and Twitter, amongst others.

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This is going to be BIG.

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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pitching VC peer-to-peer founder 322

Both Sides of the Table

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. Over the past 2.5

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VC venture capital capital investment 223

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2016

His insatiable curiosity helped him learn not only from Josh, and First Round's partners like Howard Morgan--who is moving back to angel investing after a tremendously successful run as one of the most well respected venture capitalists--but from successful founders and startup professionals.

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David Teten VC

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

It’s hard enough to raise capital from VC, private equity fund, and family offices. The vastly larger universe of B2B companies, many of which have teams focused on pushing VC and private equity funds to evangelize their product to their portfolio. See my list of due diligence questions for VC and private equity funds. .

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venture capital capital ventures VC 126

Revolution

MAY 23, 2023

Part of the antidote for startups: employing a more prudent approach to raising capital and curating a diverse investor base. To shed additional light on this issue and its ultimate impact on startups, I partnered with the Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation to ask proptech founders about their capital and strategic partners.

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real estate venture capital VC innovation 278

This is going to be BIG.

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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coworking spaces hospitality culture coworking 545

American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 7, 2024

Female-founded venture firms have shown strong support for female-founded startups accounting for 28% of their deal counts from 2016 to October 2021 in startups with at least one female founder. venture firms allocated only 22% of their deals to female-founded startups. billion of total venture capital.

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venture capital capital ventures health 105

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). I like technical founders so this wasn’t an issue.

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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' But she also has the temperament, which is important.

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