Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

Think about venture capital. But if you were going to start a venture capital fund today, you’d want to stand out. First Round Capital – No prizes for guessing what kind of firm they set out to build. IA Ventures – Roger Ehrenberg was doing angel investing before he became a VC.

communities 304

communities startup creativity VC 304

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. When I went to raise money in 2006 I thought I knew every term in a term sheet but somehow I still got a bit duped by the option pool shuffle. Investors own 25%, the founders own 75%.

founder 405

founder VC venture capital entrepreneurs 405

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2012

Back in 2006/07 when I sold my company and then worked at Salesforce.com there were very few options in SF for technology folk to build their careers at big, growing companies. Spark Capital, Flybridge, Founder Collective, NextView Ventures … all in Boston or Cambridge not west of the city. Juniper and countless others.

technology 313

technology incubation VC ventures 313

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. When Salesforce.com decided to buy my company in December 2006 I dropped everything and focused religiously on closure. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. If you remember your history the market crashed the next week. Any deal. Things change.

venture capital 301

venture capital advice VC real estate 301

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2010

File this under both Startup Adivce and Sales & Marketing Advice. I became quite good friends with a journalist at the Financial Times and eventually helped her as she wrote a book on the venture capital industry. Robert Scoble interviewed me in 2006 about my startup, Koral. It started socially.

advice 307

advice media startup SaaS 307

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.&#. 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. >50% of our revenue in now viral.

founder 329

founder VC advice pitching 329

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

There’s no doubt (at least anecdotally) that the pace of VC investments in early-stage technology companies has picked up in the past few months. But there are many zombie VC’s with no more investments left in their portfolios so it’s hard to know which trend has more impact. Volume has no doubt picked up at active firms.

VC 255

VC venture capital networking innovation 255

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. We spoke about the changes to an “accredited investor&# proposed by Chris Dodd – This would be bad for angel investing. and who had biz reasons for wanting to remain stealth.”. - We spoke briefly about why.

VC 285

VC financing finance advice 285

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

2006 was the last time I went out to raise venture capital. I tried to argue my views on vesting to a company I tried to invest in 2 years ago. When the markets turned sour and they didn’t hit their objectives the non-standard investor decided not to follow its investment. They now own 100% of worthless stock.

founder 252

founder pitching VC advice 252

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. Thus is venture capital. My blog was wiped out.

VC 274

VC venture capital pitching capital 274

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. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly?

VC 263

VC board investing investment 263

Feedough

APRIL 24, 2021

In 2006, Aytekin Tank founded JotForm as a side hustle while working full-time as a senior web developer in an Internet Media Company. With a full-time job, investing more time in learning new skills through courses and special training will only result in pointless delays in establishing your business. Save Your Earning.

entrepreneurship 97

entrepreneurship strategy energy advice 97

propel(x)

MARCH 2, 2017

However, Cleantech has long been considered an investing black hole where it’s impossible to make money. Here steps in Jason Holt, former staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, serial entrepreneur, and a seasoned investment advisor. Venture investment in the sector has remained pretty flat the last several years.

energy 70

energy advice technology mix-use 70

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. “My This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Brad on blogging.

venture capital 288

venture capital pitching communities entrepreneurs 288

OnStartups

MARCH 24, 2021

An Odd Start To My Angel Investing. So I thought of an idea: Why not invest in startups? Angel investing is like having a niece or nephew. Both were actual companies (not academic exercises), and I decided to make an angel investment in both of them -- mostly because I really respected the two guys: Brian Shin and Mark Roberge.

angel investing 125

angel investing investing investment pitching 125

Smart Hustle Magazine

JUNE 4, 2021

I started in 2006, learned garage doors, I was painting them at the time. But, it’s an investment. When you start viewing things as an investment versus costs, and you truly believe it’s an investment, is when you change your whole reality. Not those on the front line, clearly, who you invest a lot in.

leadership 88

leadership advice sustainability investing 88

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Close shop to try and control monetization and you can only rely on your own internal innovation machine & capital. Since 2006 I have been lamenting what I see as “the Facebook problem&# – they are trying to lump me into one big social network. Seems kinda obvious or am I missing somethign?

networking 318

networking mix-use innovation development 318

Y Combinator

MAY 1, 2019

30:00 – Investing in yourself. Craig Cannon [00:09:18] – I thought that was actually a really nice piece of advice that you gave because you interviewed at Yelp twice. It was like things were still happening, so I really wanted to– I didn’t want the ship to sail without me capitalizing on it a little bit.

peer-to-peer 44

peer-to-peer advice creativity opportunity 44

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

“We did hear that and I think it’s very poor advice,” he says. That only changed in 2019, when it decided to incur losses in favor of investing millions trying to conquer the U.S. Between 2006 and 2008, Klarna continued to grow as more people started shopping online. market, choosing New York and L.A.

investing 143

investing investment mix-use media 143

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

“We did hear that and I think it’s very poor advice,” he says. That only changed in 2019, when it decided to incur losses in favor of investing millions trying to conquer the U.S. Between 2006 and 2008, Klarna continued to grow as more people started shopping online. market, choosing New York and L.A.

investing 82

investing investment mix-use media 82