Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 If you''re newer to VC math here''s a great primer]. Nobody cares. Why the latter?

VC 399

VC advice financing finance 399

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

One of things I’ve loved the most about doing now 11 weeks of This Week in VC is a chance to have an hour-long recorded conversation with investors. One of the most difficult things to do as a first time entrepreneur is to get to know the investors you might be working with if you accept money. So how did Mike get into VC?

VC 230

VC ventures venture capital capital 230

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? I’m enjoying being a VC. I thought I’d talk a bit about the differences I’ve experienced between being an entrepreneur & a VC – you know, from “both sides of the table.&#.

entrepreneurs 384

entrepreneurs startup VC real estate 384

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

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. 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? Short answer – yes.

VC 263

VC board investing investment 263

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. We spent the first 45 minutes or so talking about industry trends (in this order): The history and background of True Ventures, one of my favorite early-stage VC’s (and the one with whom Om is a venture partner). Are “strategic investors&# (e.g.

VC 225

VC social gaming venture capital networking 225

Revolution

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

According to PitchBook , VC investments were down 30% in Q2 2022 compared with 2021, and IPOs hit a 50-year low. When deal-making slows, VC dollars typically favor the perceived market leader, starving other venture-backed businesses in the same space of capital. The last category is most actionable.

startup 130

startup board VC venture capital 130

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

I often talk about what I’m looking for when I meet with an entrepreneur. Above all else I’m looking for a genuine passion for what the entrepreneur is doing. You can sense when it is a “mission” for this entrepreneur to succeed and she will continue the journey even if success isn’t easy or immediate.

peer-to-peer 373

peer-to-peer VC pitching entrepreneurs 373

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

Every time he opens his mouth about founder diversity, he seems completely out of his league to address the topic. The biggest question I think VC''s face right now is whether or not, in the future, the best founders will look and act like the best founders of the past. YC''s best investing days may be behind it.

venture capital 410

venture capital VC ventures capital 410

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

I rarely talk to any startup entrepreneur or VC who doesn’t feel it and somehow long for simpler times despite the benefits we all enjoy from increased enthusiasm for our sector. For entrepreneurs there’s too much money sloshing around. We are experiencing a frenetic time. My general advice is to do less.

advice 398

advice VC entrepreneurs transportation 398

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 2, 2020

Nash said on Twitter that the two met at LinkedIn, where Nash was himself VP of product management for four years beginning in 2007. After moving on to a bubble-era company that no longer exists, Nash tried his hand at VC for the first time, joining Atlas Venture as an associate. But Nash didn’t disappear from the scene.

startup 104

startup VC education pitching 104

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. The industry did that in 2007.

ventures 419

ventures VC capital SaaS 419

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

For entrepreneurs who want to learn about how to work with investment banks, how to position yourself to be acquired and what the IPO markets look like this is the episode to watch. They have relationships that are hard for entrepreneurs to build. million from Trinity Ventures, Founder Collective, Highline Ventures, NextNew Ventures.

VC 242

VC venture capital ventures capital 242

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. But VC is like congress. As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US.

VC 374

VC peer-to-peer entrepreneurs board 374

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2011

One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? I’m enjoying being a VC. I thought I’d talk a bit about the differences I’ve experienced between being an entrepreneur & a VC – you know, from “both sides of the table.&#.

entrepreneurs 176

entrepreneurs startup VC real estate 176

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. Answer: Not much. It’s a shame.

disruption 308

disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Cautionary note: No competent VC is actually fooled when you show up after raising $6M in seed financing and say you’re now raising an A! This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. Nobody cares. Why the latter?

VC 136

VC advice financing finance 136

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

I believe the rise in angel investing is here to stay and the professionalization of this class (aka “super angels&# or “micro VC&# ) is a good thing for the VC industry and for entrepreneurs. It’s a non-fiction story of many of the players at the heart of the financial crisis that became exposed in 2007/08.

angel investing 306

angel investing investing investment VC 306

TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2022

Marc is the managing partner of MGV , where he focuse on working with world-class entrepreneurs in tech. ‘The tortoise and the hare’ story is playing out right now in VC. The capital markets are still very much on the side of founders, and there’s plenty of room for the scales to rebalance. Contributor.

SaaS 64

SaaS venture capital capital VC 64

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. I have done 6 VC investments – all within the past 20 months. Any VC 3 years in saying otherwise would either be exaggerating, lucky or an extreme outlier.”

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

European entrepreneurs who want to launch startups could do worse than Switzerland. While they can withdraw those funds from the business the next day, local founders must still secure decent backing to even begin the work. Katrin Siebenbuerger Hacki, founder, Medows. Olaf Hannemann, partner, CV VC AG.

startup 144

startup ecology education incubation 144

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

Since M-Pesa’s mobile money infrastructure came into play in 2007, there has been a proliferation of fintech services ranging from wallets to savings and loans. came to East Africa in 2007 to work on philanthropic biofield projects. Founded by Brendan Playford and Cate Rung , Pngme started primarily as a lending platform in 2018.

accelerator 93

accelerator financing finance capital 93

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2013

After all, you’d have to be a really big baby to complain about being a VC. You’d imagine your favorite founder, VC, blogger, political figure, billionaire, whatever has a stress free life pontificating about how to build the next really cool, society-altering product or changing a city, state or country.

creativity 313

creativity VC board entrepreneurs 313

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2010

It’s meant to be a bit provocative but the reality is that I give this advice to entrepreneurs all the the time and I usually leave the “e&# off of the end. I normally offer this advice in the capacity of really wanting to help entrepreneurs so please bear with me. management, founders, angel investors) get any money.

venture capital 289

venture capital capital ventures advice 289

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. The reason is that no VC wants to see the venture debt provider get burned if you become bankrupt.

startup 383

startup VC frameworks capital 383

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). Chris Dixon made the point that he thinks investors should look for the founders to have the domain knowledge rather than them having domain knowledge themselves. Not everybody agreed.

angel investing 152

angel investing investing investment VC 152

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. 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’m a VC so I have an obvious bias.

startup 336

startup advice pitching VC 336

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. 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 believe that.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2011

More importantly, I know them both for a while--Hilary since August of 2007 through twitter and, of course, getting to work with her at Path 101, and Kara since I used to e-mail her about her Boomtown columns in the WSJ over ten years ago. Does that make it a viable strategy for every new entrepreneur? Are there examples of that?

data analysis 298

data analysis venture capital communities strategy 298

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

We learned from Periscope’s founder, Kayvon Beykpour, about Scott’s role as a trusted advisor and confidant in the company’s earliest stages, culminating in Periscope’s acquisition by Twitter and subsequent integration. His work with the Periscope team exemplifies his character as an investor.

creativity 56

creativity entrepreneurship venture capital entrepreneurs 56

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. Entrepreneurs are inherently risk takers.

entrepreneurs 293

entrepreneurs VC advice consulting 293

Don Dodge

APRIL 6, 2015

Co-founder Paul Graham got his Masters and Doctorate degrees from Harvard. Robert Morris, another co-founder, was a professor at MIT. Paul and his co-founders wanted to get involved in Angel investing but wanted to do it in a scalable way, involve lots of friends and advisors, and be more “hands on” than the typical Angel investor.

incubation 40

incubation angel investing pitching venture capital 40

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. Two weeks after Brad’s post I was at the 140 Conference in LA and I held open office hours for any entrepreneur who wanted to spend 15 minutes talking with a VC about their business.

education 282

education creativity innovation entrepreneurs 282

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I originally conceived it as the Top 11 things that I believe “all entrepreneurs need to succeed.&# If it stuck to this theme then I would stand by my top 11. Domain Experience – “Domain experience&# means that the founders have worked in the industry before. I met the CEO Brian Malewicz several times.

entrepreneurs 267

entrepreneurs advice SaaS networking 267

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.

founder 329

founder VC advice pitching 329

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Not coincidentally, they also serve as training grounds for some of the world’s most successful startup founders. Although we haven’t been on the inside at Techstars for several years, we grew up with the program and have watched with growing dismay as it drifted away from its original focus on founders.

startup ecosystem 195

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 195

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I’d like to explain as best I can my opinion on what is going on because most of what I hear from entrepreneurs is not only wrong but is reminiscent of what I heard in 1997-2000. What is the True Sentiment of VCs? It pains me to see the typical (and predictable) responses on Twitter, “VCs want prices to drop!”

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs real estate 285

Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

These changes will create opportunities for founders across the entire stack of computer-aided design tools for architects, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, and finally integration with 3-D environmental models to understand and design the lifetime impact of the buildings.

construction 259

construction investing investment opportunity 259