Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Union Square Ventures (USV) has been one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past 10–15 years and continues to be a leader in our industry. Lindel is no stranger to thorny venture capital issues — he was arguably amongst the most successful LPs of his generation. Maybe that’s USV, too.

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leadership VC venture capital ventures 161

Founders Coop

JANUARY 11, 2023

We started the firm in 2008, on the cusp of the Global Financial Crisis, and it’s somehow fitting to be entering our 15th year as the laws of financial gravity reassert themselves once again. By contrast, venture capital is a craft that defies both speed and scale. Founders’ Co-op turns fifteen this year.

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founder peer-to-peer VC sustainability 168

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

And of course I’ve sat on the other side of the table: As a VC. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. I now observes the fund raising process as a profession. Why buy me?

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strategy development VC advice 366

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 9, 2022

I’ve been asked by portfolio companies and plenty of others about how they should be changing their strategy given the stock market pullback and what they’ve been hearing on “VC twitter”. VCs need to invest to make their returns—and eventually, they’ll want to raise the next fund to layer more fees upon more fees. VCs gonna VC.

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VC financing finance leadership 244

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Despite the titular “Robinhood for Egypt and the Middle East”, Thndr has had to be ingenious in its strategy based on four pillars, said the founders. Tiger Global, Dubai-based early-stage VC BECO Capital and Prosus Ventures co-led the Series A investment. In addition to providing U.S.

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investing investment ventures incumbents 99

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). Real-time search engine.

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VC social gaming venture capital networking 225

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

Had a great chat with Jim Armstrong who is a General Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners today on TWiVC. It was especially fun for me because we got the chance to talk about the VC industry and how entrepreneurs should think about the VC industry in addition to discussing deals. Segment Three: “VC Deals Funded this Week”.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry. I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly?

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

This was the first episode where Jason wasn’t on the show, which gave me the chance to have another VC on the show to discuss deals. Rustic Canyon is an LA-based, but geography-agnostic VC that is currently investing from a $200 million fund. VC Financings: 1. I keep meaning to get him drunk to spill the stories.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 270

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago.

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VC venture capital financing finance 387

TechCrunch

JULY 19, 2022

Everyone loves an underdog, which is why investors and tech journalists are so fond of discussing startups that launched during the Great Recession of 2008, like Airbnb, Uber, WhatsApp, Mailchimp, Square and Venmo. Once a key driver of global venture activity, fintech investment slows around the world. Walter Thompson. yourprotagonist.

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pitching venture capital VC financing 94

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Apparently, venture capital is a cruddy asset class where you can't get returns over the long term. That might make sense, if venture capital was an asset class. Saying that venture capital is an asset class is like saying that Italians are a race. Venture capital works largely the same way. It's a lot more skill based.

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real estate venture capital entrepreneurship creativity 299

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. YOu should check it out. OTHER DEALS.

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VC financing finance advice 285

TechCrunch

JULY 12, 2022

Startups and VC. They say there’s a market wobble in progress, but you wouldn’t think so by the number of new funds and venture firms that got announced today. 20 million for legacy industries : C2 Ventures raises new fund to invest in the “dull, dirty and dangerous” by Catherine. Darrell has more.

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strategy VC leadership ventures 97

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

I spoke at Michael Kim’s excellent annual Cendana VC/LP conference today. One of the points I tried to make is that as venture capital investors as an industry we seem to have a healthy disdain for public market investors. This will be seen as a watershed moment in the wake-up call and rationalization of our industry.

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David Teten VC

JANUARY 12, 2022

However, few investors can directly impact the value of the underlying asset, except for private equity and venture capital investors with portfolio acceleration strategies. For example, activist hedge funds, and most private equity and VC funds. Rolling ten-year returns have steadily declined across hedge fund strategies.

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disruption peer-to-peer strategy venture capital 52

OurCrowd

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

SALT Talks-OurCrowd Pandemic Venture Investment Series (Part 1). Despite the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, venture capital is well placed to thrive as the world becomes increasingly digital and demands innovative solutions, according to one veteran Silicon Valley investor. Watch the full episode here. and Box Inc.

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investing investment VC venture capital 67

TechCrunch

AUGUST 12, 2022

“It’s comparable to the financial crisis of 2008, when poor financial products were lumped together in order to diversify risk and make them look better than they actually were,” he writes. Malvika Bhagwat and Kriti Bansal, Owl Ventures. Rebecca Kaden, general partner, Union Square Ventures. “I pre-seed deck.

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pitching advice education energy 79

TechCrunch

MARCH 7, 2023

However, it appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing. CB Insights recently found that two of the largest global VC firms, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, actually backed more fintech companies in 2022 than any other category.

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advice ventures sustainability investing 110

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

By now you will likely have read Andy Dunn’s scathing post about Venture Capitalists in which he decries the industry’s masses. But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” The second is not.

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VC peer-to-peer entrepreneurs board 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs.

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disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. It is clear that he is simply passionate about being a VC and participating in this industry. In 2008 they raised a much larger fund $132.5

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capital board VC pitching 284

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

Many of the companies above have been bottled up for years behind privately funded growth strategies. On to the headlines from TechCrunch and Extra Crunch: If you didn’t make $1B this week, you are not doing VC right (EC). The VC and founder winners in Airbnb’s IPO (EC). Affirm files to go public. Airbnb files to go public.

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construction venture capital mix-use VC 130

TechCrunch

JULY 12, 2022

In his latest TC+ post, Michael Perez, director of growth and data at VC firm M13, shares five questions he uses to devise pricing strategy frameworks , along with three value metrics and a detailed measurement plan for GTM strategy. Turn your startup’s pricing strategy into a powerful growth lever. yourprotagonist.

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strategy pitching frameworks VC 91

Angel Capital Association

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

From an investor’s perspective, 2022 witnessed a sudden market reversal from an extreme equity seller’s market to an equity buyer’s market, causing dislocations throughout angel, VC, and startup ecosystems. 2 A (temporary) venture capital reset? All asset managers, not just VCs, would be subject to this greater risk.

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startup VC SaaS capital 52

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. I believe that.

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real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Via TechCrunch by Arman Tabatabai: Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries. Last November, we surveyed 13 of the top robotics-focused VCs to find out which areas of robotics are exciting them most going into 2020.

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construction investing investment opportunity 259

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 9, 2020

I had just started working in the venture capital business in 1987 when the stock market crashed 23% on “black monday.” And then there was the financial crisis in 2008. Back in 2008, I was blogging my purchases of Apple, Amazon, and Google during that crisis. But hope is not a strategy.

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strategy venture capital capital opportunity 213

TechCrunch

JUNE 24, 2022

Startups and VC. That’s what happened this week with Ro , which laid off 18% of its full-time workforce to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of [its] organization, and better map our resources to [its] current strategy.” Haje reports on the thing, noting that Leica only sells about 100,000 cameras per year.

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health incumbents mix-use transportation 102

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

I asked him if he’d be willing to allow me to interview him for This Week in VC and we filmed it in the offices of Stack Overflow – his new company. In 2008, he founded StackOverflow , and it has become the foundation for a question and answer platform called StackExchange. Stackoverflow was created in 2008.

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peer-to-peer communities development innovation 285

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would point readers to Martin Kleppmann’s useful blog post with graphs illustrating the effects of a valuation cap on entrepreneurs, seed investors and later-round (typically VC) investors. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds.

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incubation financing finance mix-use 98

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

Last night I spoke at the Enterprise Tech VC Panel. Call it micro-VC or mega-seed fund, there’s a new investor class which raises funds between $50 and $100M to invest in seed-stage companies. In 2008, when I first started in venture, a$500k seed was sizable. These are the five most important trends for 2013, in my view.

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VC capital investing investment 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. It also takes options off the table if you eventually find out that this isn’t a VC backable business. I’ve spoken about this in a post entitled, “ Do you even need VC ?&# It’s a tricky question with no clear answer. There are trade offs.

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startup advice venture capital VC 319

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. In the book they profile how VC worked in the early days (60s / 70s).

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