A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 14, 2022

There is a lot of criticism of venture capital in web3. Bitcoin did not have or need venture capital. Ethereum did not have or need venture capital. So why would any web3 project need venture capital? But venture capitalists do, particularly good, experienced, and confident venture capitalists.

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The Seraf Compass

MAY 10, 2023

One of the biggest trends we witnessed over the past few years is the rapid pace of new early stage venture fund formation combined with significant growth in the amount of capital invested. Staying on top of the early stage investing world requires a lot of reading.

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The Seraf Compass

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Travel to almost any part of the world these days and you are likely to run into clusters of entrepreneurship.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 15, 2020

In venture, it’s all about getting an opportunity to make partner and being included in the carry—the economic upside of a fund. There are so many different ways to interpret the data on who gets venture and why. Not all hires, however, are made equally.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Today's top founders will undoubtedly start something new in the future, but they won't make up the majority of innovators going forward--just as prior generations of venture backed founders don't make up a majority of those who are succeeding today. I didn’t say venture investing was easy—but at least we got a look.)

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The Seraf Compass

OCTOBER 25, 2023

The good news is that if you get a little help from competent experts, setting up and managing a venture fund does not have to be too complex from either a legal or an accounting standpoint. However, if you start an investment fund and collect and lose other people’s money, that’s a very different story.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Today we’re announcing that my partner Kara Nortman is becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to welcome her to her new role. She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. She had all of the skills and traits we sought?

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures A question I often hear is “how is Upfront changing given the current market?” What do you do with a $650 million platform?

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Revolution

MARCH 26, 2025

We believe great companies can start and scale anywhere, aided by the fact that startups in emerging venture communities are often more capital efficient, offer a lower cost of doing business, and attract talent looking for a better quality oflife. I have more like them, but not nearlyenough.

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500

DECEMBER 16, 2019

This year we dove headfirst into the rise of corporate venture capital, the changing nature of venture capital education, and the important task of startup ecosystem building. In 2018, we saw this trend reach new heights with more corporate venture capital (CVC) funds than ever.

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Both Sides of the Table

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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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

In New York, for instance, there are now venture funds with a West Coast mentality and firms with an East Coast mentality; the same is true for firms in San Francisco. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? Do startups need to conduct due diligence on a venture fund’s LPs?

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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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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 18, 2025

a pioneering company in quantum computing hardware, has secured a significant investment from Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc. With the support of Applied Ventures and other industry partners, Qolab is well-positioned to push the boundaries of what is possible in quantum technology.

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The Seraf Compass

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Steven Wamathai is the General Partner and Co-Founder of FrontEnd Ventures, a Kenya-focused venture capital fund committed to supporting local and diverse founder teams that are passionate about innovating and changing their value chains.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Or that venture capital is a meritocracy? This doesn’t take into consideration, however, that venture capital is a financial product—a product that works for some people and doesn’t work for others. We know what the racial and gender wealth disparity looks like: This is a lesson taught to be by Jewel from Collab Capital.

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The Seraf Compass

MARCH 15, 2023

Matt Johnson is the founder and Managing Partner of Johnson Venture Partners, a micro venture capital fund investing in seed and early-stage startups. Matt has invested in over 40 venture-backed companies throughout 15 years of early-stage investing experience.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 30, 2015

Because most internet business concepts were not capable of productively employing tens of millions of dollars of venture capital does not mean they were bad ideas." All they would have to do is cut a few hundred people or two, and stop buying growth with venture dollars. That''s when the heads start rolling.

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Revolution

MAY 23, 2023

The remaining 2.8K+ active investors in proptech are mostly asset managers, family offices, corporate venture capital firms, and real estate executives (let’s call this group “strategic” investors). VC firms are not blameless — over 1.8K VC investors wrote checks into proptech deals over the last five years.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

Unlike venture capital funds, they don't make money directly off the multiples of their return. Rowe Price and Fidelity funds who bid the company up to ridiculous valuations in their pre-IPO rounds. Seemingly everyone except them knew that the company wasn't worth that much--but it didn't matter.

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Hunter Walk

MARCH 10, 2025

One byproduct of this movement, especially during the blitzscaling era , were new startups in areas such as finance, healthcare, housing, education, using venture capital to acquire customers at accelerated rates.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

It's key to getting into venture capital. That's how you get funded. That's how you get hired and how you can hire the best people. It's why you get press and even how to get customers. If you were driven to be the very best person anyone could ever hope to work with, you'd go on to do amazing things.

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Innovation 2 Enterprise

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Since first investing in Oklahoma startups in 1999, i2E, and now its independent Venture Capital Fund management partner, Plains Ventures, have managed numerous early-stage debt and equity investment funds, making 452 investments in more than 250 companies. Alkami , Oklahoma’s first unicorn, was valued at $3.1

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 18, 2021

In early June, I wrote this post explaining that I and we need to do more to reduce the inequality issues for Black people in tech, venture capital, and startups. I think MLK day is a good time to talk about what has happened since that post.

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Dream It

JULY 31, 2019

4- Any startup can raise venture capital I've also seen a misconception on business types, versus their ability to raise venture capital. Our ability to relocate to the States depends on our ability to get a permanent resident visa, which is not only hard but expensive.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 27, 2021

Last fall, USV raised two new venture capital funds from our loyal and supportive investors. "we remain committed to our way of practicing venture capital … Our funds are small. We announced the new climate fund on January 8th and I blogged about it here. While it is less newsmaking, it is worth talking about.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2024

So if we have healthier capital markets and more innovation than ever, what is up with the venture capital ecosystem? Limited Partners, the folks that provide the capital to the venture capital funds, have taken a beating over the last few years and are cautious right now.

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Dream It

MARCH 6, 2020

Jeff Berman is General Partner at Camber Creek , one of the first venture funds dedicated to real estate technology and the built world. The team owns, operates and manages over 150 million square feet of real estate, making Camber Creek one of the biggest value-add venture partners for real estate tech startups.

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American Entrepreneurship

SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

Startups, early-stage and growth-stage companies present their models to a gathering of angel investors and venture capital firms The Venture Atlanta Conference, set to take place on October 8-9, 2024, at The Woodruff Arts Center and Atlanta Symphony Hall, is one of the most anticipated entrepreneurial events in the southeast U.S.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

What we did: The Rise of the Rest team kicked off October with a trip to Chi-Town to catch up with portfolio companies Blueprint , Unreal Estate , and Rheaply and co-investor, Chicago Ventures. What we did: Revolution Ventures Partner, Clara Sieg , headed south to the Peach State to judge the 2023 Venture Atlanta pitch competition.

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American Entrepreneurship

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Acadian Ventures , an early-stage venture capital firm, announced its 2024 Future of Work 100, an annual list of venture-backed startups impacting how work gets done in the future. As a result, the current year’s venture-backed startups had to focus on their financial health.

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500

APRIL 28, 2020

Long before diversity and inclusion became buzzwords, we decided to make venture capital inclusive from day one at 500 Startups. They became our guiding principles, because we know that great talent exists in all forms, no matter your gender, race, nationality, age, or background.

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Source Link

APRIL 14, 2021

However, women – and especially minority women – often face institutional and systemic challenges including obtaining funding for their ventures, which can make the climb to the top slower and more difficult. Despite the growth in women-owned businesses, venture capital is still funneled to mostly male-owned businesses.

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American Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 4, 2024

T he Fund through venture capital investing advances America’s interests by focusing on sectors where “technology meets mission”, such as cybersecurity, AI, drones, space, advanced computing, and additive manufacturing. The Fund’s team values the unique experience that veterans bring to startup ventures.

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Revolution

MAY 11, 2023

Consequently, the Bay Area experienced a surge, capturing over one-third of all early-stage venture funding in the U.S., Despite 2022’s heel turn, the ten-year funding trend line still points to VCs concentrating less capital in the major coastal hubs and more in the rest of the country, a collective area of focus for attendees.

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The Seraf Compass

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

In the language of Venture Capital, the goal of a successful early stage investor is to achieve a Distributed to Paid-In (DPI) ratio greater than 2X. In other words, for every dollar you invest in your portfolio, you want to get two dollars back over time.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Public stocks, bonds, private equity, real estate, venture capital, etc. In venture capital, there were something like 30,000 companies that raised venture capital in 2019. And within each category, there are so many different investment opportunities. How do you make sense out of all of that opportunity?

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