Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2016

My partner Greg Bettinelli (worth following on Twitter) was recently named by The LA Business Journal as the “ Top deal maker in Los Angeles in Venture Capital.” I joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 and took over as co-Managing Partner in 2011 along with the founder, Yves Sisteron. From 2007-2012 I scoured LA constantly.

disruption 226

disruption VC communities ventures 226

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There are too many pulls & tugs at our elbows for time, for coffee meetings, for advice or speaking engagements or cocktail parties or dinners. My general advice is to do less. I offer the same advice for many of my friends who are newer VCs. The best of the best in our industry are feeling it, too. Easier said than done.

advice 398

advice VC entrepreneurs transportation 398

Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). 5 million was always the classic definition of an A-round between the late nineties (crazy financings aside) and say 2007.

VC 136

VC advice financing finance 136

TechCrunch

JULY 27, 2021

in 2004 before falling sharply due to the economic recession of 2007-2009. Sequoia Capital led the round and was joined by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation venture investment arm Arrive, Will Smith’s Dreamers VC and existing investor Signia Venture Partners. “Our The rate reached its peak of 69.2% The rate reached 63.7%

real estate 98

real estate health VC advice 98

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. Just as I was getting the swing of things the world shifted beneath my feet and the stock market went into a free fall and venture capital all but shut down for nearly a year. Accel led the B, Morgan Stanley the C and now HIG the D. Over the past 2.5

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VC venture capital capital investing 223

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Current rount: $8.14mm in Series A from Redpoint (lead), Foundry Group, with previous investors, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca), Ravi Narasimham. Founded in 2007.

VC 240

VC peer-to-peer advice collaboration 240

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

But in recent years, corporate docs are being drawn up in English to facilitate communication both inside Switzerland’s various language regions and foreign capital, and investment documentation is modeled after the U.S. What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now? Ten years ago startups were unusual.

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startup ecology education incubation 144

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

It’s the one bit of advice I find myself giving most frequently these days, “raise money at the top end of normal.&#. 2007, 2011) and for the hottest of companies and in bad markets for fund raising (2003, 2008) prices test the bottom end of the range. I saw this kind of pricing when I first entered the VC market in 2007.

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startup advice pitching VC 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. They should heed the age old advice that raising slightly more money while you can is always better than trying to optimize future valuations. But imagine a VC that did 12 deals per year in 2006, 2007 & 2008.

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VC board investing investment 263

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. There are many times when being overly capitalized before you’re ready is a negative. Availability of Capital.

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startup VC frameworks capital 383

Smart Hustle Magazine

DECEMBER 7, 2021

By Joe Camberato – CEO National Business Capital. 2) Capitalize on Available Assistance Programs. Our goal at National Business Capital is to help businesses grow their ventures. Contributor: Joe Camberato is CEO of National Business Capital , the leading fintech marketplace offering streamlined small business loans.

culture 98

culture sustainability financing finance 98

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. I started in 2007 with a thesis that my primary investment decision would be about the team (70%) and only afterward about the market opportunity (30%). ” Hours and hours if you’re engaged.

VC 374

VC investing investment entrepreneurs 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

But if 2011 & 2012 look more like 2008-2009 than 2010 or 2005-2007 then one of the most important skills of angel investors will be whether they can get their companies financed (or ramen profitable, but this is harder to sustain over a long period of time). Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry.

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angel investing investing investment VC 152

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I know that most people who are close to them tend to deny their existence, as we saw in the great housing bubble of 2002-2007 and the dot com bubble of 1997-2000. I guess that makes USV, Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Accel, Benchmark, Revolution (along with several others) pretty happy right now. source: Capital IQ.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Advice to managers, entrepreneurs. With a multitude of caveats, then, it might be worthwhile to your followers to heed the following advice: Anticipate the worst, prepare for it, and hope for the best! Take a lesson from Ford Motor Company and their prescient CFO and President in 2006 and 2007. A lesson from the recent past.

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advice disruption capital entrepreneurs 62

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

This post is an attempt to unpack the changes we observed both during and after our time with Techstars, to draw out potentially useful lessons about how things might have gone differently. ——— In the Beginning: Champions of the Local Startup Ecosystem Techstars launched its first program in Boulder in 2007.

startup ecosystem 195

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 195

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

I know that 80+% of the people listening to me must have thought that was the wrong advice. I recently read the book eBoys about the founding of Benchmark Capital and the founding of eBay. I joined GRP Partners in 2007 before they raised their current fund (we closed a $200 million fund in March 2009). Why should I be?

entrepreneurs 293

entrepreneurs VC advice consulting 293

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

billion, capital that it will be using to back early-stage startups, as well as growth rounds for later-stage companies. Since its 2007 founding by Morris — who also co-founded Capital One Financial Services in 1994 — and Frank Rotman, QED has backed more than 150 companies, including 20 unicorns.

investing 91

investing investment capital advice 91

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.&#. By then I was still on the board of my first company but it hadn’t yet sold (it ended up selling in 2007 to a publicly traded French company). It’s that simple. Many term sheets ensued.

founder 329

founder VC advice pitching 329

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

We raised a seed round of capital in 1999 and our first venture capital round was the first week of March 2000 (e.g. We were now set to close at $46 million in new capital. We found a way to get a round of venture capital closed after all of this. Tags: Start-up Advice Startup Advice. You can do it.

entrepreneurs 308

entrepreneurs advice real estate venture capital 308

Y Combinator

MAY 1, 2019

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. It really only takes one.

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. “The invoicing company” “When they started, they didn’t position themselves so much as a startup or as a tech company,” recalls Skype founder Niklas Zennström, whose venture capital firm Atomico would eventually become a Klarna investor in 2012.

investing 143

investing investment mix-use media 143

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

It had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users, which actually was slightly smaller in December 2007 then MySpace was. Close shop to try and control monetization and you can only rely on your own internal innovation machine & capital. In May 2007 there were fears that Google was becoming a monopoly.

networking 318

networking mix-use innovation development 318

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

“We did hear that and I think it’s very poor advice,” he says. “The invoicing company” “When they started, they didn’t position themselves so much as a startup or as a tech company,” recalls Skype founder Niklas Zennström, whose venture capital firm Atomico would eventually become a Klarna investor in 2012.

investing 82

investing investment mix-use media 82

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Mike Yavonditte is the founder of the “super hot&# Hashable , a startup out of NYC that has been described as a “ Mint.com for Social Capital ” Mike sold his previous company, Quigo , to Aol for $340 Million. They sold in December 2007, but he started selling Quigo in 2004. Judged his instincts, and felt it was Quigo’s time.

disruption 302

disruption technology financing finance 302

FundersClub

JUNE 30, 2017

" Christopher Janz of Point Nine Capital takes a look at what some of the smartest people in the industry have said and written about Product/Market Fit in " WTF is PMF? " Cankut Durgun of Aslanoba Capital dives into the ways we can reverse entropy in our lives by exerting effort in " Effort and entropy.

construction 70

construction SaaS board strategy 70

abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 26, 2012

What is great about this story is how the hero capitalizes on the greed of the casino managers. Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse (originally published in 2007) is offered as premium content behind the Longreads subscription wall. He offers advice on everything from running a BOD meeting to maintaining innovation in a large company.

financing 68

financing finance media innovation 68

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 20, 2013

You can do the math on Tumblr''s pageviews, throw in some expected CPM, weighted average cost of capital, and try to justify the billion dollars that Yahoo! In December of 2007, I wrote the following e-mail to Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, and Bjian Sabet: "I met with David the other day about using Tumblr to power Path 101 career blogs.

venture capital 291

venture capital communities advice capital 291

Smart Hustle Magazine

JUNE 4, 2021

You have other people who can market for employees… So let’s go back then to that growth of between 2007, 2017, this 10 year, and how’s grown. And that’s the asset side, and the capital side, and industrial side, which is powerful. Ramon Ray: I love it. And as a leader, that’s probably your job.

leadership 88

leadership advice sustainability investing 88

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My advice to entrepreneurs was and is “ when the hors d’oeuvres tray is being passed take two ” (e.g. This has been especially true for angels or seed investors as there is a new thesis that less capital is needed to start Internet companies so more money is being spent at this phase of the funding lifecycle.

entrepreneurs 298

entrepreneurs real estate VC advice 298

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

When I first got into the industry it was 2007. 2010 was the year of the “super angel&# and 2011 has to date been the year of unbelievably highly priced B,C & D rounds of venture capital. He pinged me for advice. Venture capital is an industry best served up from 7-year aged casks. Yesterday was a Monday.

VC 305

VC disruption entrepreneurs venture capital 305

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

If you add in 7% banker IPO fee, that represents a 55% cost of capital (for an entire year worth of IPOs, count 165). With the 7% banker fee that is a 35% AVERAGE cost of capital. Large buyout firms are much more likely to have “ capital markets ” teams and much more likely to have experienced wall street executives in their ranks.

peer-to-peer 82

peer-to-peer VC advice capital 82