Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 Helping companies get to next financing round successfully: I was just beginning this phase in Sept 2010 and said so. I’ve now been involved with many other successful foll0w-on financings. years ago. Sourcing high-quality leads : 9/10. Since then?

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387

TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2022

‘The tortoise and the hare’ story is playing out right now in VC. After the last few weeks of geopolitical volatility spilling over to the financial and crypto markets, it seems like all anyone can talk about is what startups and VCs can, should or will do in the anticipated downturn. More posts by this contributor.

SaaS 64

SaaS venture capital capital VC 64

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! 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].

VC 136

VC advice financing finance 136

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

JULY 10, 2010

The importance of the conference is that it assembles most of the top privately held early-to-mid-stage technology companies in the country (and some globally) as well as most VC’s, growth equity funds and corporate development departments from large industry players looking at technology acquisitions. Venture Financing.

VC 242

VC venture capital ventures capital 242

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2010

It’s a bit like if you bought a $1 million home in 2007 and want to sell it for $1 million today. management, founders, angel investors) get any money. One is slightly better and priced at $1 million, which you know from Zillow is what they paid for it in 2007. Not so VC. So what happens?

venture capital 289

venture capital capital ventures advice 289

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

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. But I prefer a certain naive optimism in founders but I can’t see that this extends to angel investors. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

angel investing 152

angel investing investing investment VC 152

Haystack

APRIL 10, 2018

About 150 people showed up, a healthy mix of founders, seed-stage investors and big fund VCs, and a bunch of LPs of various sizes. As evidenced by today’s investor panel which included managers who focus on pre-seed, or traditional seed, or larger VC funds that can go from seed all the way to growth. Um… wow.

investing 60

investing investment financing finance 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. 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.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I’ve decided to take all of my private conversations and subjective points-of-view on the topic and make them public in a keynote speech at the Founder Showcase in San Francisco on June 15th. 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.

startup 336

startup advice pitching VC 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

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.&#. VC meetings going well. 2 million in VC. And I had all the VCs play head games with me. I swore never to do that as a VC.

entrepreneurs 384

entrepreneurs startup VC real estate 384

TechCrunch

MARCH 9, 2021

One such is Flutterwave Mobile, which in the founder’s words “will turn merchants’ mobile devices into a point of sale, allowing them to accept payments and make sales.” Fawry was launched in 2007, but didn’t become a billion-dollar company until 2020, a year after going public.

capital 145

capital frameworks investing investment 145

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

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

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

JANUARY 22, 2011

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.&#. VC meetings going well. 2 million in VC. And I had all the VCs play head games with me. I swore never to do that as a VC.

entrepreneurs 176

entrepreneurs startup VC real estate 176

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies. Topics we discussed in the first 45 minutes of the video include: What is VC like in NY? Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital.

VC 217

VC capital venture capital networking 217

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. What about VC’s and Risk? Few people have it.

entrepreneurs 293

entrepreneurs VC advice consulting 293

TechCrunch

APRIL 24, 2022

In the case of Wheelhouse, its predecessor company’s core team, led by co-founder Andrew Kitchell, didn’t give up in the face of a plunge in business. In life, are we not constantly reinventing ourselves in the same way these founders have taken learnings from their good, and bad, experiences to move on? Gotta love it.

founder 86

founder startup financing finance 86

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

What is the True Sentiment of VCs? I recently survey more than 150 VC friends from all stages and geographies what they thought about the market by asking “Which of the following statements best describes your mood heading into 2016?” But not a VC or Bill Gurley or myself would have spooked it 2 years ago.

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs real estate 285

David Teten VC

MARCH 1, 2022

The easiest way to work with and for VC funds is to become a part-time scout, getting paid for sourcing investments. How to find a job as a VC scout. VC recruiters list and compensation data. How to negotiate a partner role at a VC or private equity firm. Syllabus for how to launch, manage, and invest a VC fund.

VC 128

VC venture capital accelerator ventures 128

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the co-founder and CEO of Klarna — the Swedish fintech “buy now, pay later” sensation that is currently Europe’s most valuable private tech company — is dismissive of the suggestion that non U.S. companies should relocate to Silicon Valley if they really want to grow. Siemiatkowski left undeterred.

investing 143

investing investment mix-use media 143

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the co-founder and CEO of Klarna — the Swedish fintech “buy now, pay later” sensation that is currently Europe’s most valuable private tech company — is dismissive of the suggestion that non U.S. companies should relocate to Silicon Valley if they really want to grow. Siemiatkowski left undeterred.

investing 82

investing investment mix-use media 82

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

entrepreneurs 298

entrepreneurs real estate VC advice 298

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2017

Every year Upfront Ventures surveys Limited Partners (LPs) who are the main source of capital that invests in VC funds and thus the main source of capital that goes to startups to get an early-warning sense of the year ahead, leaving aside any Black Swans. Note that all of these names were not started in Silicon Valley.

ventures 286

ventures startup venture capital VC 286

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

After all, in the year 2020, investors that had access to VC-backed IPOs, earned $206 million in average one-day gains for each of 165 separate offerings, for a total of $34B in one-day wealth transfers (including over-allotments). of VC-backed companies vs Buyout-backed companies. Are We Too Gullible or Naive? I don’t think so.

peer-to-peer 82

peer-to-peer VC advice capital 82