Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

I’ve been on the road much of 2012 and part of 2011. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. One of the most asked questions I get about being a VC who was formerly an entrepreneur is if I ever miss being an entrepreneur? And I’m happy as a VC. And so it goes again.

entrepreneurs 122

entrepreneurs VC founder venture capital 122

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. The three largest webmail services had over 1 billion global users at the end of 2011. I suppose I could have skipped the whole rest of the blog post and just posted that. There are 2.9

SaaS 339

SaaS VC real estate board 339

TechCrunch

MARCH 13, 2021

During his free time, he started a blog to tell his friends back home about his life out west, and also to recommend TV shows. Slowly, Mike’s Bloggity Blog became one of Canada’s premier entertainment sites, and Morrison found himself with a local newspaper column as well as regular television and radio appearances.

venture capital 137

venture capital capital culture advice 137

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 14, 2019

Tumblr was both a blogging platform and a social media application and while I always loved the versatility of the platform, native mobile applications benefit from simplicity, not complexity. There was a time around 2010 and 2011 when Tumblr was the most engaging social platform that I was on.

media 202

media investing investment development 202

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2013

I miss blogging because it serves as a great repository for me of my current thinking, as a way of organizing my thoughts and clarifying what I think and as a conversation started with so many of you (as Hunter Walk elegantly said, “Blog not to show how smart you are, but in the hope of soliciting feedback from smart people.

creativity 313

creativity VC board entrepreneurs 313

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I was thinking about all of this as I looked at the logs from my WordPress blog this evening. I started blogging 2 years ago. And 18 months later, in May 2011, I have crossed 422,000 views.

advice 391

advice VC financing finance 391

TechCrunch

JANUARY 27, 2023

In 2011 , as Twitter hit the 100 million active users mark, the entrepreneur left to pursue new projects with Obvious Corporation , a startup incubator and investment vehicle that had included fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and former Twitter exec Jason Goldman. The venture most notably incubated the blogging platform Medium.

board 110

board founder startup incubation 110

Hunter Walk

JUNE 26, 2023

Chris Neumann (of Canada’s Panache Ventures ) checks these boxes so I asked him to come on my blog (currently less consistent, hopefully still the other two) for Five Questions. Chris Neumann: I’ve been lucky to have been a part of 5 startups going back to the late-90s, including two that were VC-backed (DataHero and Aster Data).

founder 96

founder ventures culture advice 96

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

I’ve been on the road much of 2012 and part of 2011. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. One of the most asked questions I get about being a VC who was formerly an entrepreneur is if I ever miss being an entrepreneur? And I’m happy as a VC.

entrepreneurs 420

entrepreneurs VC founder venture capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. Still, as I’ve written in the past, what I love about blogging is the ability to have a public debate where we can all learn. I’m sorry, but that’s dumb.

angel investing 267

angel investing VC mix-use entrepreneurs 267

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Talking about whether to raise more money or not, their VC allegedly said to them: “If you had more capital, could you get to the future faster? I loved the quote so much I wrote an entire blog post on the topic. It takes options off of the table.

entrepreneurs 374

entrepreneurs incubation board VC 374

Haystack

APRIL 10, 2018

As evidenced by today’s investor panel which included managers who focus on pre-seed, or traditional seed, or larger VC funds that can go from seed all the way to growth. As I argued at the start of the year, there are no longer any rules about what constitutes seed and who can play in the game.

investing 60

investing investment financing finance 60

For Entrepreneurs

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

This blog post looks at the process that I would use as a board member or investor to validate a bookings forecast, checking to see if the key elements that are needed to support that forecast have been thought through properly.

board 163

board support VC SaaS 163

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

If you want a very quick primer on all the stuff nobody ever tells you about raising venture capital check out this video where Mark Jeffrey & I break it down on This Week in VC. All of this is covered in more detail on the TWiVC video above (and much of it is covered in text on this blog on the “ Raising VC &# tab).

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 5, 2015

In 2010, Foursquare hit it big in Austin not long after their funding, which I accidently kicked off with a blog post. In 2011, GroupMe seemed to be the winner. You know the only answer VC''s should feel qualified to give on this one? I might even say that the Meerkat funding is peak VC for this cycle. sad trombone ].

VC 295

VC venture capital technology networking 295

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

A great recent example of this was a successful group of entrepreneurs who had created a company that will do $10-12 million in revenue at their system integration business (read: services business) in 2011 after having done $5 million or so in 2010 and $2-3 million in 2009. Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC?

VC 332

VC advice financing finance 332

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 6, 2020

and moved away from the Disqus comment system, I heard loudly and clearly that the folks who have left comments here at AVC, via Disqus, from 2007 to early 2020, would like to have their comments displayed at the bottom of all of those old blog posts. Back when we launched the new AVC (AVC 3.0)

development 148

development communities 148

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 27, 2021

That was USV’s initial web2 thesis: USV in 140 characters: invest in large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience, and defensible though network effects — Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) June 8, 2011. Chris Dixon called that “come for the tools, stay for the network” in this blog post.

networking 273

networking opportunity investing investment 273

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

I remember meeting Zach Sims and his co-founder Ryan Bubinski back in 2011 when they started Codecademy. What is more impressive is that when you read this blog post Zach wrote this week you see that he is just getting started. Zach was still in college and thinking of dropping out to focus on the Company. Time does fly.

education 151

education sustainability founder entrepreneurship 151

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

A year ago I blogged about one of my most common mantras that applies to sales, biz dev & fund raising alike: “ Time is the Enemy of all Deals.&#. The market is over-valued in 2011 relative to norms. It doesn’t feel like that in February 2011. Sometimes this pays off, other times it doesn’t.

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advice frameworks capital mentorship 303

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 27, 2021

I am returning to a topic that I have talked a lot about on this blog. Derek Rose was the first pick in the 2008 draft and by 2011 he became the youngest NBA player to win the Most Valuable Player award, something he accomplished at age 23. It was grit. A year later he tore his ACL and he has struggled with injuries ever since.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

I had been trading emails & Tweets with venture capitalist John Frankel and we were to meet in person in March 2011 at SxSW to talk about Klout and other investments he had made. Other people were convinced including Kleiner Perkins who lead their $30 million fund raising in 2012 (they had previously also invested in 2011).

venture capital 303

venture capital VC ventures capital 303

TechCrunch

MARCH 2, 2021

During the onset of the pandemic, Aboyeji, via his blog post , said Future Africa Fund was looking to raise institutional investment. Two years after launching the African entertainment company in 2011, Njoku and his co-founder Bastian Gotter launched SPARK , a self-described company builder and a $2 million fund.

founder 144

founder financing finance investing 144

TechCrunch

MARCH 15, 2021

Up until this point, Gumroad has raised more than $8 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins, First Round, Max Levchin and SV Angel, as well as others, since 2011. You can imagine influencers and sherpas with an audience replacing the concept of a VC fund. So far, Gumroad has raised $3.4

venture capital 112

venture capital VC capital financing 112

Hunter Walk

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

Endless anti-union tantrums, delivered with the confidence that only a VC who had a single personal interaction with a union 7 years ago could muster. LLH: When starting Belly in 2011, yeah, we were tracking something like 15 companies in the Loyalty space. I’ve heard many fast and hard passes. then a passing reference to Jimmy Hoffa.

venture capital 66

venture capital ventures capital mix-use 66

Haystack

DECEMBER 30, 2019

But then I talked to a mentor who reminded me this blog usually was and should still be a medium for me to think out loud, and that this act of constantly thinking should be valuable to at least me. It’s been a nearly 10-year slog since I moved back to the Bay Area in 2011 and meandered my way into the world of venture capital.

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