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 is very rare but has happened. That can work too.

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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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JANUARY 22, 2018

This will be the post where I dangerously attempt to walk the minefield of a white male VC opining on the topic. However, if you don't want to evaluate your inbound deal opportunities, that's the job, my friend. That pitch has never excited any VC in the history of VC funding. Makes my skin crawl.

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MARCH 21, 2025

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. 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.

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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. Side Benefits Ideally, a small fund could get you the following, but you have to ask to make sure it’s available: Co-investing opportunities. The question is why you would get tapped for this opportunity.

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MAY 11, 2015

In case you're curious what the deal funnel means for my time, I did that, too: Seeing an opportunity could mean an e-mail, a calendar request, a pitch at a demo day, a news item, a LinkedIn position change--really anything that makes me conscious that a new startup might exist.

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JUNE 24, 2015

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 As a result Matt feels compelled to give back to Harvard Westlake to provide similar opportunities for economically challenged individuals.

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JUNE 13, 2018

As a VC and former entrepreneur let me offer you some advice. Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting. Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting.

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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. What Did I Learn From the First VC Check I Ever Wrote?

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SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We have global opportunities from these trends but of course also big challenges. I’m over-paying for every check I write into the VC ecosystem and valuations are being pushed up to absurd levels and many of these valuations and companies won’t hold in the long term. How our VC Firms Like Ours Organizing to Meet the Challenges?

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JUNE 22, 2020

To a VC, $50,000 a pre-sale isn’t really that much. VCs are less interested that you sold 10 customers, 20, or 100—they want to understand how many you’re selling per week and whether or not that kind of pace would be profitable for your sales & marketing efforts.

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SEPTEMBER 11, 2016

You don't need to start out with money, get a Harvard or Stanford MBA, or sell a company to become a VC. Winners come in time, but access to opportunity comes when can add real value, and when you build a reputation for being the kind of investor a founder wants in their company.

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APRIL 6, 2015

I''m just trying to invest in the best opportunities. You''ve been in VC long enough to see lots of different funds, partners and deals. You get a lot of choice as a VC as to who you want to spend your time with. Are there existing larger VC funds that you''d consider joining, or are you BBV for life? Hard to believe.

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JUNE 23, 2014

When I turn down the opportunity to invest in a startup, I really turn it down. If I don''t have clarity on something, it means that I don''t think the space and the opportunity size is big enough to get clarity. You''d rather know exactly why I didn''t do a deal than scratch your head over some opaque "VC speak".

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MAY 16, 2024

This is something I talk about a lot with my VC coaching clients. What if you could draw that same-sized opportunity around a different set of criteria—not a vertical, but a theme that affects multiple verticals? The question is what to focus on.

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AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. 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. ” I’m not so sure.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 12, 2022

And so leading this protocol effort will be an opportunity to help shape what that looks like. I believe Kickstarter is at the forefront of a wave of companies that have been built on web2 technologies that will be adopting web3 approaches to move their products and stakeholder networks forward. USV TEAM POSTS:

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MAY 10, 2020

VCs are notorious for kicking tires. VCs take a meeting just to learn about an area. If deal flow is slow, a VC will take a meeting if you and your team seem mildly interesting even if your product isn’t. Some VCs have no money left in their funds, but they still like playing VC. Do you have dry powder for this?

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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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OCTOBER 14, 2015

I spoke at Michael Kim’s excellent annual Cendana VC/LP conference today. You can read it in VCs discussions about hedge fund managers, activist investors or the need to have dual-share voting structures. The truth is that Twitter is an amazing company and still has an amazing opportunity in front of it.

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Revolution

MAY 23, 2023

VC firms are not blameless — over 1.8K VC investors wrote checks into proptech deals over the last five years. These strategics have fundamentally different models and objectives for investing in proptech startups compared to a VC that is focused on generating returns through scaling tech companies.

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The Seraf Compass

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Join Seraf for an engaging and informative webinar on VC investing in BRICS countries, with an emphasis on the exciting opportunities in Brazil. This event is tailored for venture capitalists, startup founders, and investors eager to delve into the high-growth potential within Brazil's dynamic market.

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DECEMBER 28, 2013

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. My own track record as a VC across First Round Capital and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures actually starts in January of 2010, *after* the Airbnb class of Winter 2009.

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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. Our very best portfolio companies would be offered an opportunity to go public by the top investment banks on wall street. I don’t take as much offense to this situation as others in the VC business have. We will see. It will be revealing to all of us in time.

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Hunter Walk

MARCH 3, 2025

But we’re interested in taking this risk when the person and opportunity warrants it. If you’re a VC raising your first fund, and you think you fit either of these descriptions, please let us know. And how quickly the firm can process new information and adjust if portions of their hypothesis need tuning once in market.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Sometimes the opportunity set forces you to go faster. As I wrote then: I don’t think a VC firm should manage to a pacing number. It should manage to the opportunity set that it sees. But even so, the VC business has turned into a sprint. I don’t know if the VC business is near a top or near a bottom.

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FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Go pitch a VC with an idea, and they''ll tell you to build it. In my mind, that creates the opportunity for increasing returns. Go to them with a prototype and they''ll tell you to launch it. Launch it, and they''ll tell you to get more users. Get users and they''ll tell you to get paying customers. No risk, no return.

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JUNE 29, 2014

That’s a shame because many of these people missed out on what will be a few great VC vintages. I wrote about this in a blog post last year titled “ It’s Morning in VC ” but I never made the full deck available until now. This is the opportunity set for venture capitalists. VCs used to IPO and then sell.

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OCTOBER 12, 2014

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. A day after I published this Changing Structure of VC article I noticed at least one “Angel Prorata Fund” on AngelList. Prorata rights.

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OCTOBER 22, 2017

Do you think there is more money out there looking for good opportunities, or more fantastic opportunities? There was a time not too long ago when VC bios read "Fab investor", "Quirky investor", and "Gilt investor". Even if you're not one of the worst, and you strive to do your best everyday, a VC isn't perfect.

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JANUARY 22, 2014

These are things that other VCs think about, but founders who come to pitch don''t think about too much. as a VC, sometimes your own website becomes an afterthought. That''s also why I''m finally launching a real website at brooklynbridge.vc. When you blog, tweet , Instagram , etc., So there ya go.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

I was having a conversation last night with another VC who was suggesting I monetize the pro-ratas that I don't take by creating SPVs. That's the kind of company you want to fund as an investor--not something that only gets big when you need to squeeze every last dime out of the opportunity. You're leaving money on the table!"

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Revolution

MAY 11, 2023

Our findings confirmed a significant shift away from the traditional tech hubs of the Bay Area, New York City, and Boston, with the proportion of seed- and early-stage VC dollars funneling into the Bay Area falling below 30% for the first time in more than a decade. There are untold impacts of climate change many of us don’t see.

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AUGUST 11, 2021

Think of it as Bloomberg for marketers, in a way that gives smaller companies and teams as much firepower as larger organizations to help them optimize spend across channels and identify new, high-performing opportunities. Why Did I Invest in Trust?

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 5, 2020

Most of USV’s big wins have been in companies where we were the first institutional VC to talk to the company or where we had way more conviction about the opportunity than other investors at the time of our investment. ” He was surprised and said “You are the first VC to say that.”

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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 about how a VC can compete and win a deal that many others want. That is a failure of the system. But this post is not about that.

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NOVEMBER 29, 2014

My starting salary when I joined a VC fund as a partner at the age of 39 (and after 2 exits)? That’s less than most startup CEOs who have raised a few rounds of VC are paid. Why did I join as a partner in a VC fund on that salary? I had never been a VC before. I was investing in myself.

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