Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5 What is a VC fund? VC’s don’t invest 100% of their own money.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

One of the investment themes I’ve been focused on in the past 3 years has been Performance-Based Marketing. When I started investing the US advertising market was $300 billion with only 10% of it ($30 billion) of it being online and measurable. I hope to announce one investment in this space in the next few months.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Because my role as a VC requires me to take and endless stream of meetings I long ago decided I need to learn as much as I can from the meetings I attend so I often just ask tons of questions and assimilate knowledge. When I think about what defines us as a VC I think: Operationally knowledgeable / strong startup competence.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

Let me start by saying that Clayton is one of the most influential people on my thoughts about markets that led to both the concept behind my first startup and my main theses in investing. We spoke about the disruption of VC through crowd funding. It’s not that I don’t believe in liberal arts, humanities and the like.

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Both Sides of the Table

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.” With Meredith I did every on-reference-sheet call I could make and many off-reference-list calls.

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APRIL 29, 2011

Then I realized that it's probably not obvious what the dynamics are around how VCs tend to get introduced to companies and what works best for people, so I figured I'd blog about it. A lot of VCs ask to be introduced through someone. And these represent some of our most successful investments. Would you invest in it.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. Answer: Not much.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

When this first ran on TechCrunch I got the greatest comment in the world that I had to repeat here, “VC’s are like martinis: the first is good, the second one great, and the third is a headache.&# I understand the appeal of having many VC firms on your cap table. These are all dumb reason to invest – of course.

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David Teten VC

MARCH 1, 2022

The easiest way to work with and for VC funds is to become a part-time scout, getting paid for sourcing investments. How to win consulting, board, operating, and investment roles with private equity and venture capital funds (video). How to find a job as a VC scout. VC recruiters list and compensation data.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 16, 2016

Computer Vison Startup Nanit If you follow me on Snapchat ( msuster ) you might already know that I’ve been looking at and investing in a number of companies in the computer vision space. My thesis is that it will become a major I/O computing metaphor or as this field is sometimes referred to HCI ( human-computer interaction ).

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

I knew him well before he became a VC. I knew his as he considered becoming a VC and we talked a lot about how it was going for me in my early years. These engagements went well and he came highly referred by my friend Gary Swart who runs oDesk. Hell, I can barely manage 10 investments – how could anybody do 500?

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TechCrunch

MARCH 4, 2022

The D’Amelio family, including TikTok stars and digital creators Charli D’Amelio and sister Dixie , are formalizing their investments in startups with the launch of a new VC fund, 444 Capital. But many of Tandem’s LPs have returned to invest in 444 Capital. Image Credits: Step.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

As many of you know I run a weekly webcast called This Week in VC that’s getting between 25-35,000 weekly views across ThisWeekIn.com, YouTube & mostly iTunes. there was no frame of reference for the value. My key take away – frame of reference in pricing is important. Yesterday’s show floored me.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

I had dinner this week with a top new customer at one of our enterprise software investments. I wish I did more enterprise software investing because when I attend meetings like this I realize that this is my core DNA – rolling out business software solutions to customers. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had.

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 14, 2013

We used Dumbo as a reference and talked about how the critical mass of Two Trees buildings created a neighborhood with multiple destinations. There was no strategic goal to build venture backed startup companies, but yet at least three companies in her community got VC investment last year. and figure out how to support them.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

But in my experience as an entrepreneur and now spending my time amongst investors I can generalize that almost all VC investments in early stage technology & Internet investments come down to just four key factors. And VC’s are tough customers. I obviously don’t speak for all investors.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 28, 2022

So I saw this tweet by Semil Shah yesterday: A friend who works in an industry far from tech startups & VC asked what would be the single article I’d share to read on each topic. It is also true that there are good deals and good entrepreneurs that can’t find anyone to invest in them. That is a failure of the system.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2011

And yes, VC’s, too. Often recruiters want to handle the final negotiations on package and/or do the reference calls. I’m also reluctant to hand over reference calling. But I doubt they’ll dig in as deep as you will in the reference checks. Unfortunately that’s how reference checking works.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. The fact that Kara doesn’t have what my wife likes to refer jokingly as my “Y chromosome problem” is beside the fact. He said to me (only 9 years ago), “I hope you’re not just hiring her because she’s a woman.” (I

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 15, 2021

VC Lab , an accelerator for venture capital firms, wants to create investors who will back the rest of the world. Today, VC Lab is providing a set of freely available boilerplate documents intended to streamline the process, save everyone time and money and make fund governance structures more accessible.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

In late 2018, the company raised $75 million Series C from Sequoia, arguably the top VC firm in the world. After being largely ignored by Valley investors (the biggest checks in her seed, Series A, and Series B came from men on the East Coast), she finally found support from the VC elite. VC David Sacks tweeted “??

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 11, 2015

I’ve worked very closely with Matt over the past four years as we share an investment in a company in Los Angeles called NextPlus and we sat on a board together for years. He’s had a ton of recent successes in enterprise software investments but also has a history in doing consumer deals. He’s committed.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. If you haven’t read the other VC fund-raising posts I’ve done as part of this series you can find the whole outline and this first in the series here.]

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

David Teten is founder of Versatile VC and writes periodically at teten.com and @dteten. What are the ‘jobs to be done’ of an investment manager? The macro trends forcing change on the investment management industry. Versatile VC runs a no-cost community for founders in transition, “ Founders’ Next Move.”

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This is going to be BIG.

JULY 27, 2017

For VCs: Be upfront about the possibility of you investing now versus whether this is a "get to know you" kind of thing. Make references to founders you've backed available upon request. Does the VC need to call a special partner meeting because you already have three term sheets or is this the beginning?

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 27, 2010

I even started referring to him as a podhead. The trick is figuring out the timing. Back when I was at Union Square Ventures, Fred started to get really excited about podcasting. We looked at every podcasting deal on the market. Luckily, we didn’t pull the trigger on anything—but we were certainly early to thinking about it.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

My favorite two quotes of the weekend were: “Never trade your cat for somebody else’s dog” (referring to selling your company for stock to another privately held company – quote was from Alan. And awesome to get to spend time with Ian Sigalow “comparing notes” (VC speak ). I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2015

It has become so synonymous with Internet companies that the French have invented a disdainful term including Amazon: “les GAFA,” which they refer to as Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon to talk about American dominance of the Internet. And they have. Innovation. MakeSpace set out to reinvent the whole category.

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David Teten VC

MARCH 5, 2021

(co-written with Katherine Boe Heuck , a MBA candidate at MIT Sloan (class of 2022); past intern at Versatile VC ; and a current intern at Metaprop NYC.). What can we learn from the best 40 venture capital investments of all time? Well, we learn to invest exclusively in men, preferably white or Asian. .

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StartupNation

JANUARY 6, 2022

The way people fund their business has also been evolving and, in 2022, the traditional ways like angel investment and VCs will walk hand in hand with new and emerging blockchain-based options that offer loans outside the traditional banking system. Angel investment. Venture capital or VC. Decentralized crowdfunding.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 25, 2013

Back in 2006, when I started working on putting together some community groups for entrepreneurs and tech people, I looked for a better name to reference this collection of people. Three companies from the Studiomates community-- Sherpaa , Tinybop , and Editorially --received VC dollars in 2012. via Brownstoner.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 1, 2010

In today’s post I want to talk about the concept of a VC flightpath. This is my description of a VC process, not one I’ve heard from other VCs so don’t expect it to be accepted nomenclature. Even when you’re getting the VC love this reality I imagined couldn’t be further from the truth.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

When you’re hiring most reference checkers focus on the person’s former bosses. Just literally this week I had breakfast with a guy giving a reference who said, “He’s brilliant. In fact, just a short Google search reveals that I’ve referred to him frequently through the years. But he knows it.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

You make too many reference calls or want to see three more candidates before you decide. You’re a VC. Your’e thinking about investing in a company. So you make four more reference calls. Let me give you some obvious examples. You’re thinking about hiring an employee but you sit on the fence too long.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing Raising Venture Capital (VC) series. When people refer to a strategic investor they are usually talking about an investor that comes from the industry you serve as opposed to an independent venture capital investor. When times are bad many cease investment activity all together.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&# Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough. Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. If you haven’t read how to build VC relationships and demonstrate traction make sure to read it.

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JANUARY 18, 2024

I’m talking about what someone I know recently referred to as “dentists”. These are people that didn’t make their money through a tech startup or startup investing. They might have a more flexible time horizon than a VC because the money doesn’t come from a fund with a limited lifespan. I’m not talking about active angels.

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