Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. Investors own 25%, the founders own 75%.

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founder VC venture capital entrepreneurs 405

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Not so in venture capital. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. Get to know VCs over a long period of time so that when you’re ready to get engaged you feel you know their character. After Sept 11th?

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

Lots of discussion these days about the changes in the VC industry. The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion.

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VC startup real estate financing 311

Gust

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

Me: So, you raised venture capital? Me: Raising convertible notes as a seed round is one of the biggest disservices our industry has done to entrepreneurs since 2001-2003 when there were “full ratchets” and “multiple liquidation preferences” – the most hostile terms anybody found in term sheets 10 years ago. On the phone ….

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VC financing finance entrepreneurs 153

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital. During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. Startups should know how VCs work. startup) per month.

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ventures startup capital board 334

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. What is your revenue growth rate and what does this imply about your number of months of capital remaining?

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VC capital culture venture capital 392

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. Another called Parker Harris, the co-founder and CTO. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog.

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VC venture capital pitching capital 274

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We received so much positive feedback from our This Week in Venture Capital show walking through valuation calculations & term sheets that we decided to do a Q&A show this week to address topics that entrepreneurs want to learn about. In fact, far better if you haven’t raised venture capital. A: It’s not best.

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venture capital capital ventures angel investing 282

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

When I first started in venture capital, back in 2001, I used to fund funds. I worked for an institutional investor that invested in both venture capital funds and later stage growth deals. My job was to figure out why certain firms were winning and why they might continue to win.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 11, 2022

For example, Leading Edge Capital closed on nearly $2 billion for its sixth fund, Base10 Partners brought in $460 million for its third fund, Founders Fund secured $5 billion for two funds, Freestyle raised $130 million for its sixth fund and the list goes on and on. Overlooked Ventures co-founders Janine Sickmeyer and Brandon Brooks.

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venture capital investing investment ventures 97

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Andre Maciel is the founder of Volpe Capital. Jennifer Queen is the founder of Pina , a PR firm focused on startups and venture capital firms. Latin American venture capital and growth investments through 2018 had averaged less than $2 billion per year. Image Credits: Volpe Capital. Share on Twitter.

venture capital 95

venture capital capital VC opportunity 95

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. 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? Short answer – yes.

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TechCrunch

MAY 17, 2022

Hailing from around the United States and the globe, founders will pitch on the main stage, for four minutes, followed by an intense Q&A with our expert panel of judges. Join us on Wednesday, May 18 and Thursday, May 19 to watch these incredible founders take the stage. I know you want to see who made the cut.

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pitching energy startup consulting 76

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

EDT, we are talking with Andrew Chan about why Gen Z VCs are trash, and at 12:00 p.m. EDT, we’re talking with M13 partner Anna Barber about what today’s founders can learn from the dot-com bubble bursting. Startups and VC. TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead.

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micromobility SaaS capital VC 89

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. So in the past we needed VC to really get a startup going. Answer: Not much.

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disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. 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.

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real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Justyn Howard, founder of Sprout Social has a blog post that he’s written about his experiences of migrating from scrappy tools to more efficient ones (i.e. Our first big institutional round of VC was $16.5 I learned everything I know about startups in these lean years: 2001-2004.

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culture construction startup advice 333

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 12, 2020

As for the capital-raising event, I think it’s hard for the bankers to know where it will land with the broader market, so I’m not as negative as maybe some others. While several marketplace unicorns prepare IPOs, a VC digs into the data (EC). I do think this could be a $500 billion-plus company. There’s so much to be excited about.

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venture capital capital SaaS startup 122

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2014

And as DeCambre points out, so far through 2014, the ten largest startup financings have yielded about twice as much capital as the ten largest IPOs. To paraphrase Mark’s question, can startups raise just as much capital in the private markets as in the public market, without the hassle of public market regulation?

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financing finance VC capital 40

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice &# but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.&#. On a panel that I sat on with Ron in LA in 2008 he stated that there were no circumstances in which the founder should take money off of the table. VC’s who don’t get this are naive.

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founder VC advice pitching 329

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

I’m not going to cover in this post the obvious post-show marketing tasks such as following up on all those business cards you grabbed, communicating with all those people who registered at your site and leveraging your new found fame to score venture capital. I sat next to Irwin Jacobs (founder of Qualcomm) on a bus ride.

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media advice VC energy 310

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. I’ve raised money as a “hot company” and I’ve raised capital when no one would return my phone calls. I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies. Executive Summary.

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strategy development VC advice 366

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

My co-founder and other management team members wanted us to hold off and see whether we could get the deal done at a higher price. It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. I lived through this again September 2001. Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. VC, sales, biz dev, M&A or otherwise.

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venture capital advice VC real estate 301

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

Individual accredited investors in typical angel deals put personal capital at risk for an equity share of growth-oriented, start-up companies. We also have data points for VC investments in seed/startup companies (but not necessarily pre-revenue companies). Is the founder coachable? – Need venture capital.

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angel investing investing investment opportunity 146

Unvalidated Learnings

OCTOBER 5, 2016

And yet, this is the story Phil Knight, Nike’s founder and long time CEO recounts in his brilliant autobiography Shoe dog. In similar fashion to many Silicon Valley startups, the founders simply scratched their own itch: they loved track running and single-mindedly dedicated their life to designing the best shoes to do so.

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startup entrepreneurship culture communities 40

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice. 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. But I loved reading them and so did my team.

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peer-to-peer communities development innovation 285

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2017

(there’s a great story from Jonah in the video but you have to watch to hear it :)) But it’s undeniable that it has become a digital media powerhouse having raised around $500 million in capital with a valuation reported at $1.7 billion and revenues likely exceeding $250 million (Wikipedia lists 2015 revenue at $167 million).

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media leadership innovation VC 210