A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

APRIL 13, 2021

It is a little known part of my career, but for a brief period from 1997 to 2001, I was part of a small group of investors who helped to create a startup ecosystem in Latin America. In that Chase Capital Partners meeting was a woman named Susan Segal who ran Chase’s Latin American private equity investing.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 6, 2021

Bain Capital Ventures has named Christina Melas-Kyriazi, a former Affirm executive and angel investor, as its newest partner. Melas-Kyriazi will be based in the firm’s San Francisco office and focus on seed and Series A investments in emerging fintech and commerce companies — two core areas of focus for the firm.

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Angel Capital Association

MARCH 29, 2023

Early-Stage investing is inherently cyclical, and for the first time in over a decade we are experiencing a downcycle. An important question leaps out: Is it better to invest more or less during a downcycle? 25% of those outcomes were initially funded during downcycle years (2001-2003 and 2008-2011) with the rest during the upcycles.

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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. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital?

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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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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Andre Maciel is the founder of Volpe Capital. Morgan, and was a managing investment partner at SoftBank. 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.

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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. That’s new.”.

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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. They raise larger and larger funds, for example, after building up a track record of successful angel investments.

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TechCrunch

JULY 7, 2021

Mikal is an early-stage investor at Wavemaker Partners investing in startups across North America, MENA and Asia and author of the newsletter Emergent , analyzing one fast-growing startup in an emerging market every week. Mikal Khoso. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Image Credits: Mikal Khoso. Unlocking Pakistan’s potential.

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TechCrunch

JUNE 7, 2022

The ability to raise capital is less impressive than finding sustainable ways to build a base of paying customers. EDT, we’re hosting a Twitter Space with new contributors who are covering climate, crypto, venture capital and more. “Across the board, the variance in metrics is stark,” says Townshend. PDT/11 a.m.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 2, 2014

My godfather got me IBM stock right after that, so that''s how I knew that a stock market and investing existed. I got my first job in venture--at GM--in February 2001. Venture Capital & Technology' My dad brought home an IBM PS/2 in 1987. I got an internship on the buy side at the GM pension fund in high school--in 1997.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

This morning OutSystems , a low-code app development service, announced that it has closed $150 million in new capital. The round was led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global. OutSystems was founded in 2001, making it older than most companies that we cover on TechCrunch, and yet it remains privately held.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 4, 2023

Natalia Holgado Sanchez is head of capital markets at Secfi , an equity planning, stock option financing and wealth management platform for startup executives and employees. Capital was extremely cheap to borrow as interest rates dipped as low as 1.67% (compared to rates in the last few years bottoming out at 0.25%). Contributor.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

This lasted from about 2001-2004. Since then Mike his built his career by investing in early-stage companies (seed or series A), which is remarkable given that Polaris Ventures is a $1 billion fund. Simple: according to Mike Polaris has followed on nearly every seed investment that they’ve done. Total raised: $30mm.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Contact Financial Holding, Egypt’s non-bank consumer finance provider, has invested $9 million in the country’s ecommerce super-app Wasla , setting the stage for the rollout of new online shopping capabilities, products and regional expansion. Offline payment is also a costly option for buyers as it comes with a cash-on-delivery fee.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 3, 2012

I've been in venture capital (with the exception of a year in product management and two years as an entrepreneur) since 2001, when I started doing late stage venture and fund investing at a big financial institution. And I'm sure, everytime I think that, people say the same thing about me and the extent of my track record.

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Feedough

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

But, still, every startup, especially those seeking angel and venture capital funding, are conditioned to project this growth curve – because investors love it. To capitalize on this excellent growth opportunity, some entrepreneurs tend to make significant changes in a model that has been working reasonably well for them.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

2001, a Starbucks Odyssey : In August, Starbucks got things percolating with plans for a blockchain-based loyalty program and NFT community. Olsen spent six years with Sequoia Capital in California before co-founding Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, in 2013. The TechCrunch Top 3.

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StartupNation

DECEMBER 6, 2020

There’s also been tremendous growth when it comes to dollars invested in female-founded companies. At the same time, according to research by All Raise, only 15 percent of all venture capital funding is allocated to female founders. A lot of this gender imbalance is due to unconscious bias at the funding stage.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 24, 2022

Ventura Capital led the round, with participation from Iberis Capital and a number of unnamed strategic investors from the maritime industry. Tekever — based, fittingly, in historic maritime superpower Lisbon, Portugal — was founded back in 2001 and has only been offering commercial services since 2018.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 29, 2021

John Danner , managing partner, Dunce Capital (an edtech and future of work fund with portfolio companies Lambda School and Outschool). Mercedes Bent and Bradley Twohig , partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners (a multistage generalist fund with investments including Forage, Clever and Outschool). Image Credits: Bryce Durbin.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 21, 2023

After all, the money could be invested in something more impactful. Now, if you were to tell me VCs were starting to return capital to LPs, I could see some parallels. VCs would return capital to LPs because they don’t see attractive investment opportunities that are good fits with their mandate, fund size, [and so forth].

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TechCrunch

MAY 17, 2022

Yoon founded a seed fund, Forest Ventures focusing in automotive sector and was an investment director at SAIC capital, one of the leaders in China’s automotive industry. Before SAIC, she led the Corporate Venture Group at Maxim Integrated, where she led multiple strategic technology acquisitions and venture investments.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 22, 2014

If this pace of fund raising continues, 2014 would mark the biggest year for VCs since 2001, when the industry raised about $38B. The second quarter of 2014 is the sixteenth largest by capital deployed sinced 1995, making it a top quartile quarter, but to break into the top five, that figure would need to triple.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

billion , it begged an obvious question: If the original idea didn’t work, why not adjust its model or do something completely different while it still had capital? Ed Sim, co-founder at boldstart ventures was part of Dawntreader Ventures in the late 90s when his firm invested in an early version of the company called Metapa.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

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. So the people who invest in VC funds have two problems.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I guess that makes USV, Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Accel, Benchmark, Revolution (along with several others) pretty happy right now. million pre-money valuation is now raising $1 million at a $12 million valuation the next investor has nowhere to go but up (or sit out the investment). source: Capital IQ. source: Capital IQ.

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OkDork

DECEMBER 9, 2022

His parents invested $300,000 to help Amazon get started. In the last quarter of 2001, Amazon finally turned its first profit. So he’s clearly investing a significant amount of resources into the development. He started it in 1998, and it has made a number of successful investments over the years.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

I’ve seen friends (and family members) lose much of their savings that way over the years because “Black Swans” happen and in 1987, 2001, 2003 & 2008 (just to name a few from my memory) huge market gyrations caused much financial distress to people seeking short-term gains. So, too, investments.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. If you invest it in startups you’re a VC professional money manager.

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StartupNation

DECEMBER 6, 2020

There’s also been tremendous growth when it comes to dollars invested in female-founded companies. At the same time, according to research by All Raise, only 15 percent of all venture capital funding is allocated to female founders. A lot of this gender imbalance is due to unconscious bias at the funding stage.

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Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

Originally created in the mid 1990’s to help with the imprecise problem of how to value early stage companies, especially those in technology, I developed what soon became known as “The Berkus Method” when published in the popular book, “Winning Angels” by Harvard’s Amis and Stevenson with my permission in 2001.

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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. Here’s more: Now north of $200 million in revenue, [ Nextiva ] is a quiet giant and, notably, has not taken venture capital funding along its path to scale.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

We went “nuclear&# and slimmed down to 33 people (yes, I know, still large by today’s standards but this was 2001), raised $10 million and we built a real company. I learned everything I know about startups in these lean years: 2001-2004.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Not so in venture capital. In fact, they will think better of you because you’re demonstrating that you’re the kind of thorough person that they wanted to invest money into in the first place. My chips were down in late 2000 / early 2001.

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