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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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 12, 2014

Venture Capital & Technology' With these economics, doubtful, but you''ll never see me complaining about money, or frankly, anything about my job. I feel very lucky to be doing this.

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SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

The world around us is being disrupted by the acceleration of technology into more industries and more consumer applications. Technology solutions are now used by authoritarians to monitor and control populations, to stymie an individual company’s economic prospects or to foment chaos through demagoguery. Are we in a bubble?”

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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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MAY 24, 2018

In order to understand how to “get to yes” with a VC you first need to understand how VC partnerships make decisions and then you can understand how to increase your odds of closing a deal. VC Partnerships Start by understanding how many partners are at the firm you are approaching. Reciprocity is equally destructive.

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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. I have not seen the data to back that up but if it is true, that is also a failing grade for the VC sector. It feels like positive change is happening.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 16, 2024

Add on the fact that some people theorize that the need for venture capital dollars will peak, or potentially already has, and then decline because of the ever-decreasing cost of technology infrastructure as well as the increasing capability of AI to replace expensive humans. This is something I talk about a lot with my VC coaching clients.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 14, 2020

The NVCA and Pitch Book are out with their Q3 report on the VC industry and what they report is that the VC industry continues to be very active throughout the pandemic. Deal counts and deal values are stable to up over last year. The massive expansion of later-stage private capital continues unabated. Valuations continue to rise.

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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. The reality is that as a result of two major trends the costs of starting a technology startup went down massively.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Go pitch a VC with an idea, and they''ll tell you to build it. Technology is moving faster, markets are changing more quickly and uncertainty seems to be increasing. Venture Capital & Technology' 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.

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This is going to be BIG.

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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MAY 24, 2021

Of the first four investments I made as a VC in 2009, two have exited and two (Invoca & GumGum) still are independent and likely to produce $billion++ outcomes . My first ever investment as a VC was Invoca. He then went on the create an early-stage VC that I track closely?—? Maker Studios?—?sold Entrada Ventures? —?that

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 8, 2015

But Fab fell into the trap that many companies who go down the VC route fall into--too much money, too soon, and growing too fast. Venture Capital & Technology' Each e-mail brought with it something that I felt that need to tweet and share--and many, probably too many times, something I bought. It was built around his design sense.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 31, 2020

So today, I will write about 2020 in the context of tech/startups/VC/crypto. And technology based products and services are benefitting from these losses. 3/ Technology based commerce solutions gain when less people venture into stores to buy groceries, clothes, and other consumer products. And that is a good thing for society.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 15, 2020

In the most recent Pitchbook 2021 predictions , they project that Silicon Valley will make up less than 20% of all VC deals in 2021. If there is one megachange in VC from the pandemic (there may be many), I think it is the comfort with making investments over video without the founder or the VC traveling to meet each other.

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DECEMBER 11, 2022

Between 2006–2008 I sold both companies that I had started and became a VC. SEEING THINGS FROM THE VC SIDE OF THE TABLE While I was a VC in 2007 & 2008 those were dead years because the market again evaporated due the the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). THE VC VALUATION GOD Valuation obsession wasn’t restricted to startups.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 25, 2021

When you look at the recent Q3 numbers on seed and early-stage VC fundraising, you might think we are in the late stages of a VC bubble: The words I would use to describe the current environment in early-stage VC are “fast and furious.”

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NOVEMBER 19, 2015

"Square, the payment technology company founded and led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, this evening raised $243 million by pricing its initial public offering at $9 per share, which would imply an market value of around $2.9 What's worse is that this end of the market is even affecting early stage VC mindset. A "major disappointment".

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Revolution

MAY 23, 2023

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. VC firms are not blameless — over 1.8K VC investors wrote checks into proptech deals over the last five years.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 5, 2021

There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. I have heard that for as long as I have been in VC and probably have written it here a few times. As you can see, investing in VC funds can be very profitable.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

That all being said, new VC markets are emerging—and during the pandemic, lots of New Yorkers and folks from the Valley decamped to Miami or Austin. I know of one deal where the significant other of a VC was the head of a staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ lobbying organization—and the investor was offering money to a gay founder. Plenty of bros.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 18, 2022

Maria Lepskaya is a senior associate at Runa Capital , leading investments in different branches of quantum technologies and advanced materials. While they don’t perfectly reflect technological progress, they showcase investors’ willingness to write checks for the industry. Take IonQ, a U.S.-based

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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.” The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless. That was three months ago this week.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

In almost twenty years of producing some of the highest performing VC funds in the business, USV has never had a portfolio company become worth over $100 billion. The exit values in VC have increased significantly over the last decade leading to escalating entry values. So it can happen, but it is very unlikely. That makes sense.

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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. I don’t take as much offense to this situation as others in the VC business have. I have viewed it as a mutually beneficial relationship between the top banks, VC firms, and the founders and CEOs who lead our portfolio companies. We will see.

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Hunter Walk

MARCH 3, 2025

Mediocre VCs get wealthy themselves but they won’t make money for their LPs, and are, at best, just a WITHDRAWALS ATM for average startups. “ Different & Excellent ” equates to something that doesn’t exactly look like other VCs. I could even ask you directly which one of these you think you are and why.

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MAY 4, 2015

Try to imagine if you *didn’t* already know Amazon and the company walking into VC meetings telling people they were going to disrupt the selling of all goods starting with books but then extending into electronics, apparel, toys and so forth. We have an amazing team of W2 drivers in NYC, Washington D.C,

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NOVEMBER 19, 2015

I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” So Silicon Valley massively shifted to San Francisco.

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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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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 14, 2014

That means you actually have a *better* shot, statistically, of getting VC investment at these firms, statistically, once you actually pitch. Venture Capital & Technology' I guarantee you that if you ask any of the firms listed in the Business Insider article, and ask them if their dealflow is 15-20% women and they''ll say no.

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SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

You’d be surprised how many firms are “dictator VCs” – even those that don’t formally acknowledge it internally. When you’re newer in VC many partners choose to play it safe, doing smaller investments and not trying to bet on something that a “far out” risk.

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MARCH 24, 2014

. “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. I have done 6 VC investments – all within the past 20 months. But the truth is only time will tell whether I’m financially a successful VC and I’m comfortable in my skin saying that. None have exited. That’s normal.

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OCTOBER 14, 2013

I’ve been involved with technology product design in one form or another for nearly 25 years and seen one mistake consistently repeated. The single biggest mistake most product teams make is building technology for what they believe the user would want rather than what the actual end-user needs.

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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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Founders Coop

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

But VC bubbles deflate slowly. After half a generation of overhyped trivialities, Large Language Models have reminded us what real technological breakthroughs look like. But unlike prior technology waves, LLMs won’t just give humans superpowers, they will increasingly replace those human workers entirely.

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SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Since the majority of VC returns come from a small number of deals, “obvious” investments seldom return such incredible multiples. One such theme was “water conservation” and we morphed it into a broader theme of agriculture technology or “ag tech” for short. Apeel Technologies.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

As I wrote then: I don’t think a VC firm should manage to a pacing number. In the last two years, the VC business has been operating at a blistering pace, the fastest I’ve witnessed in my 35 years in the business (including the 99/00 era). But even so, the VC business has turned into a sprint.

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