A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Back in 2005 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink that was about how our subconscious allows us to make fast decisions that are often as good or better than slow considered decisions. The woman I was talking to said “like Malcolm Gladwell describes in Blink.” ” And I nodded affirmatively.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. Topics we discussed in the first 45 minutes of the video include: What is VC like in NY? Total raised: $16.0mm. Other Deals. TechCrunch article.

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AsiaTechDaily

JANUARY 30, 2023

In addition to his rich experiences working in the venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) sectors, Joseph has also sharpened his investment acumen through his multiple years in the audit and stock-broking industry before deciding to finally launch his cross-border investment firm, Kairous Capital , in 2015.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. My blog linked to Brad Feld’s blog because I was so grateful for his series on term sheets and he was one of the biggest reasons that as a VC I felt compelled to blog. Tempus Fugit.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 5, 2015

Ten years ago, in 2005, I started working for Union Square Ventures as their first analyst. I reiterated the notion of risk taking when giving career advice the other day and how when I joined Union Square Ventures, it wasn''t the USV it was now. Who''s the VC that everyone *isn''t* trying to network with.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising.

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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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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. I’d link to it but it’s behind a paywall.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 11, 2014

I''m super proud of Rob, Ben and the whole Backupify team--and this is particularly special for me because Backupify was the first investment I ever made as a VC, and the first board I ever sat on. Fundraising for the Series A looked like it was going to be difficult--and that''s when Rich Levendov from Avalon Ventures stepped in.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. Understand how venture debt might shorten your projections. * If you have raised venture debt you might have even less time.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

I'm so excited to hear that Indeed.com, a company that Union Square Ventures invested in while I worked there, just exited for a reported billion dollars. Back in 2005, I was a lowly analyst at Union Square Ventures with a million product ideas that I'd blog about all the time.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 6, 2022

Austin made headlines in 2021 for being “the place” for startup founders and venture capitalists alike to set up shop. TechCrunch Live is a free weekly event featuring investors, founders, and startups with the goal of helping entrepreneurs build better venture-backed businesses. Register here. It’s free.

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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.&#. He’s been at it since 2005. We could do more in 2010 with more VC investment; the doubling assumes only ratable increase in marketing spend to achieve profitability. It’s that simple.

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Angel Capital Association

JULY 13, 2020

By: Sarah Dickey, ACA Membership Director Earlier this week the Clean Energy Venture Group (CEVG) and E8 Angels announced a partnership for national climate tech angel investing with the goal to achieve greater efficiencies and impact. Interested investors are welcome to contact CEVG and/or E8 to get involved.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2021

million in a Series A round led by Silicon Valley VC firm Ribbit Capital. Kaszek Ventures, QED Investors and Greenoaks Capital also participated in the financing, which brings the startup’s total raised to $36.7 This isn’t the first venture for Cora co-founders Igor Senra and Leo Mendes.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 15, 2012

So what would have happened had Sean met Joshua Schachter in 2005--would Josh have still sold out early to Yahoo! That's the kind of thinking that Union Square Ventures has--it's not an accident that the three companies I've mentioned were all funded by USV, but we can't rely on just one VC to think about funding the billion dollar company.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 9, 2021

financing back in 2005, “climate change” was some future event. That’s where government, national labs, universities, angel investors and venture capital come in. We already have several multibillion-dollar tech and biotech venture and growth funds; now is time for several multibillion-dollar climate tech funds globally.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. 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. First Round Capital’s pre-money range is usually between $3-5 million.

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APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Brad’s start in Venture Capital. was starting.

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JULY 24, 2012

He knows every startup & VC in town.” This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. When I first arrived in LA my good friend Matt Pillar (a long-term veteran of tech, media & VC) who had been in LA for some time told me, “in LA there’s none better than David.”

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AUGUST 9, 2011

Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. Companies raised too much money in 2005-08 and had high burn rates. VCs were very active in this period. But I guess you could say the same about VC. Stock market declines would bring back dog days of VC. Why is that? Yesterday was a Monday.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

The report, titled Europe and Israel’s Startup Founder Factories , was produced by VC firm Accel with heavy support from startup and VC data platform Dealroom. Founded back in 2005, French adtech giant Criteo leads the pack with its alumni going on to create 29 so-called “second generation” startups.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 21, 2021

The Yozma Programme (Hebrew for “initiative”) from the government, in 1993, was seminal: It offered attractive tax incentives to foreign VCs in Israel and promised to double any investment with funds from the government. As in other countries in “COVID 2020”, VC tended to focus on existing portfolio companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I need to take some VC meetings. But it did take Brad as a public spokesman, consummate networker and successful VC to help create legitimacy to let David’s ideas flourish. Chris Devore & Andy Sack have created Founder’s Coop with the goal of funding, incubating & launching more early-stage ventures in Seattle.

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JULY 25, 2011

tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. When I first started as a startup CEO in 1999 there were no guides on raising venture capital. 3) VCs are anal about things like voting thresholds, seniority of their stock, protective provisions, etc. Drag along rights?

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 11, 2011

Back in 2005, when I was with Union Square Ventures, we changed our brochureware homepage into a blog. A few other VCs had been blogging before, but no one had gone as far as to make the whole front facing effort of their firm into something so interactive. It changed the way we worked with entrepreneurs.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Siemiatkowski also shares what’s next for the company as it ventures further into the world of retail banking after gaining a bank license in 2017. We also learn how, under his watch and as the company began to scale, Klarna missed the next big opportunity in fintech, instead being usurped by Adyen and Stripe.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies. 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. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds.

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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. The spin-out took a few months to negotiate and didn’t actually close until February 2005.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

MAY 4, 2021

Gil Dibner, the general partner at Angular Ventures noticed : “… we live in an era where there are tremendous short-term benefits to successful pseudo entrepreneurship. A survey of US-born founders of 502 engineering and technology companies, founded between 1995 and 2005, showed that only 10% of founders had a Ph.D.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

As many of you know I run a weekly webcast called This Week in VC that’s getting between 25-35,000 weekly views across ThisWeekIn.com, YouTube & mostly iTunes. In 2005 they realized that this business was going to evaporate over night with the introduction of YouTube. Yesterday’s show floored me. It changed everything.

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Don Dodge

APRIL 6, 2015

They were part of the Ycombinator Cambridge class of 2007, after being rejected by YC in 2005 and 2006. I remember the Demo Day in 2007 where DropBox presented to about 30 Boston area Angels and Venture Capital investors. None of the local VC firms invested. Classic VC funding is a well-understood model.

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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. source: Capital IQ.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

I saw Dan Primack assert that the venture capitalist’s customer is their limited partners in this tweet about the Citizen app, the recap, and their VCs: Regular reminder that, ultimately, VC funds works for their limited partners, not for their portfolio companies. link] I encourage everyone to read that post.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Siemiatkowski also shares what’s next for the company as it ventures further into the world of retail banking after gaining a bank license in 2017. We also learn how, under his watch and as the company began to scale, Klarna missed the next big opportunity in fintech, instead being usurped by Adyen and Stripe.

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