Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

I love how open Danielle has been throughout the development of her startup Mattermark including honest reflections of when she has changed her opinion. “I love those Beats commercials where the basketball player puts on his music and tunes it all out, to go win the game,” she said. That’s what it feels like.”. It won’t be.

startup 323

startup advice pitching VC 323

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 22, 2020

The Financial Crisis of 2008 sure seemed bad in the moment as well. There we were at the casino table again after that, pouring billions of dollars into unprofitable startups while cutting taxes when we didn’t need to, for people and companies who didn’t need it, with little regard to the future. Scrutiny is coming in a big way.

health 344

health leadership disruption education 344

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

” “Mark has a vested interest in talking down valuations of startups.” Most prefer not to say this publicly for two reasons: 1) they have an entire portfolio of startups, many of whom are raising capital and 2) they prefer not to be attacked publicly or seem “anti entrepreneur.” goes into a startup.

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs investment 285

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2011

Back at the end of 2008, when the economy was in the tank, and funding was tough to come by, NYC Seed, a small local fund with some government and local academic backing supported my startup, Path 101. She had been straddling NYC and Providence after we convinced her to take some time away from academia to work on our startup.

pitching 267

pitching support finance financing 267

American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 12, 2025

This article describes the entrepreneurial mindset behind successful startups, how you can develop that mindset, and the strategies to build your startup based on that mindset. Many startups are founded with great ideas but fail because the founder lacks the adaptability, problem-solving ability, or grit to push through setbacks.

strategy 60

strategy startup creativity mentorship 60

Dream It

APRIL 7, 2020

The venture fund launched a completely virtual program with a focus on helping 13 Urbantech, Healthtech, and Securetech startups with business development, customer growth, and capital raising in a time of economic uncertainty. Since 2008, Dreamit has worked with over 350 companies. View Dreamit’s full portfolio here.

ventures 369

ventures accelerator enablement communities 369

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 11, 2014

We stayed in touch and I got to know a bunch of the Louisville startup and creative crew, like Todd Earwood, Matt Winn, and Ashley Cecil. Rob messed around with some local video thing in 2008, which everyone but Rob thought was a pretty terrible idea. " — Charlie O'Donnell (@ceonyc) December 29, 2008.

board 274

board venture capital creativity entrepreneurship 274

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 9, 2016

In 2008, I tried to fundraise for my startup the week that Lehman Brothers went under. Over the long term, innovation prevailed and 2008 turned out to be a great year to have a 1-3 year old company if you could make it through the next year. You can imagine how well that worked out.

VC 296

VC innovation opportunity capital 296

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

We have previously raised funds in 1996 ($200 million), 2000 ($400 million) and 2008/9 ($200 million). Santa Monica is the place where the highest concentration of early-stage startups are created if you consider also the contiguous geography of Venice Beach. Startup Advice' Let’s start with the fund.

ventures 343

ventures venture capital advice VC 343

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 21, 2011

But I am also someone who is very colored by my past experience of seeing the venture implosion after the first bubble and walking through the fundraising tumbleweed of late 2008. Startup success is a team effort and you can't just have great entrepreneurs. Angels: Focus and pace. You can sign up here.

communities 332

communities innovation incubation angel investing 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

We have an entire generation of startup founders who don’t have muscle memory from getting their burn rates back into shape from 2008/09 or 2001-2005. And will produce healthier cohorts of startups that get back some of the magic of being scrappy and shed some of the extra pounds we gained when the market was ebullient.

VC 392

VC capital culture venture capital 392

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. That’s the deal you get when you’re raising in a good market for startup financing.

startup 336

startup advice pitching investment 336

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

And so it happened that between 2000-2008 I was the biggest buzz kill at dinner parties. It costs less money to start companies so the world should have way more startups.&# I’ve heard the “world is different&# argument in every bubble I’ve ever seen. But all of this increased company creation has to go somewhere.

angel investing 299

angel investing investment investing real estate 299

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

He first came to see me in 2008 when we was raising money for his 1st startup – NextMedium. Startup DNA. At every entrepreneur event I through between 2008-2012 I invite Hamet because he was a great mentor for entrepreneurs. I’ve known Hamet for 5 years. That feeling happens 2-3 times per year maximum.

ventures 340

ventures investment investing board 340

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

By 2008 I had gotten more serious about championing companies through our investment process. It was September 2008. The following is a 2-week graph of the end-of-week price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) in Autumn 2008. The market had tanked. Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy. tl;dr summary.

VC 305

VC disruption entrepreneurs venture capital 305

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

The multifold growth we''ve had in the startup engineering base of NYC happened before we even decided to build these companies. In fact, much of the groundwork of the NYC tech community''s growth came before the late 2008 economic crash--when the city started paying attention to the tech community as the economic savior poster child.

education 330

education venture capital communities ventures 330

American Entrepreneurship

JUNE 10, 2025

Hear from those who have overcome common challenges, how they have persevered to build their startups and how you can build an entrepreneurship mindset of resilience. For those engaged in the highly competitive and fast-paced startup ecosystem resilience is more than a soft skill—it’s a strategic advantage. Ask “What did I learn?”

entrepreneurship 87

entrepreneurship peer-to-peer entrepreneurs enablement 87

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I said, “It’s much easier now than it was in 2008/09.&# For others it feels like a two-speed economy, where rules apply to hot tech startups that don’t apply elsewhere. And time is the enemy of all deals so start sooner rather than later, as anybody who was planning to raise in October 2008 will tell you.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs finance financing 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

When convertible debt first started being introduced as a “faster, cheaper way to get startups funded” they didn’t have pricing built into them. A standard entrepreneur retort I heard back then (2008-09) was “I don’t know what my company is worth now. Investors call Bull Cap. Enter “the cap.”

startup 354

startup VC entrepreneurs financing 354

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2015

If somebody doesn’t work in the tech startup sector I always hate to even have the debate. “Did you see how much she wasted?” I saw this in 2001-2003 and in 2008-2010. And it’s what I believe sets apart the tech startup culture more than any other sector out there. I look for survivors.

creativity 378

creativity culture entrepreneurs energy 378

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 21, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic might have upended the global economy, but according to Meagan Crawford at Spacefund and Chris Moran with Lockheed Martin Ventures, it didn’t dampen investment in space startups. Crawford and Moran both agreed that interest and investment in space will increase as more startups have successful exits.

incubation 129

incubation startup VC sustainability 129

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 17, 2014

In 2008, I went to breakfast with Hilary Mason while I was down there. That breakfast would lead to me hiring Hilary to work at my startup, Hilary deciding to stay in NYC fulltime, co-founding hackNY, and just generally being a great community advocate for science and tech in NYC.

communities 339

communities VC accelerator startup 339

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 4, 2020

We reviewed the data in May and compared it to the effects of the financial crisis in 2008 on startup fundraising. As a reminder, 2008 saw a 40% reduction in venture dollars invested in startups. These corrections match 2008. It took about six to eight quarters to return to normalcy.

collaboration 145

collaboration accelerator capital investment 145

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. I started doing SnapStorms, which are short burst of video around a certain startup or financing topic. They thought it was like MySpace and why did I need a MySpace page? In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch.

networking 230

networking advice VC financing 230

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

I’ve seen friends (and family members) lose much of their savings that way over the years because “Black Swans” happen and in 1987, 2001, 2003 & 2008 (just to name a few from my memory) huge market gyrations caused much financial distress to people seeking short-term gains. Watch the market closely.

finance 344

finance financing ventures real estate 344

Dream It

JANUARY 23, 2019

Global PR powerhouse Cision announced today that it is acquiring Dreamit alum TrendKite in a deal valuing the startup at $225 million. Dreamit Ventures is an early stage venture fund that accelerates startups building transformative tech products in the fields of healthcare, real estate/built environment, and security.

real estate 210

real estate media accelerator pitching 210

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

years ago you’d remember RIP Good Times from Sequoia, which still strikes me as having been prudent advice in late 2008. If you’re a tech startup person I know you know what I mean. And so it goes with startups. .&# That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011. So which is it? Feast or famine?

advice 391

advice VC financing finance 391

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

2004 gave us widespread blogging and Meetups, and 2008 showed how the web could be a community organizing and fundraising tool. Hopefully this becomes the year that most of the startup teams you see have not only a business person and a tech person, but also a designer--and you start to see people looking for "design co-founders".

innovation 321

innovation technology peer-to-peer communities 321

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

In 2008, he founded StackOverflow , and it has become the foundation for a question and answer platform called StackExchange. Within a small startup with 3 engineers, everyone will work on all aspects of the site. Stackoverflow was created in 2008. He then went on to work at Viacom and Juno in NYC. His Tenure at Microsoft.

peer-to-peer 285

peer-to-peer communities development innovation 285

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

The most recent event to use as an analogy is the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, I had just joined the venture industry, and then Lehman fell. That grew to about $5B per quarter in 2007 and early 2008. Seed investments suffered a 50% fall in Q3 2008, but the market came right back in Q4 and continued to increase in volume.

ventures 143

ventures VC investment investing 143

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. The number of startups being created has increased by an order of magnitude. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! Today’s Normalization.

venture capital 347

venture capital capital ventures VC 347

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

I wrote a blog post on how to work with lawyers at a startup nearly two-and-a-half years ago. If you don’t have much experience in working with law firms at a startup it’s a good primer. In that post I talked about how to select a law-firm for a startup. Startup-focused. It was very widely read.

VC 299

VC communities investment investing 299

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Though some businesses may never be truly sustainable, a venture firm in Seoul argues that emerging climate-tech startups will help big manufacturers do better overall. The early-stage VC had already set up five social impact funds and backed 81 startups since 2020, after Han acquired the firm in December 2019.

VC 99

VC startup mentorship accelerator 99

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Industry change allows the entry of newer players at earlier stages – It doesn’t take as much money to launch a startup anymore. So in the past we needed VC to really get a startup going. If you invest it in startups you’re a VC professional money manager. We all know that.

disruption 308

disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

TechCrunch

MARCH 9, 2021

Those workflows include creative, sales, client services or startups using DocSend to deliver proposals or pitch decks and track engagement. In fact, among the earliest use cases for the company was helping startups track engagement with their pitch decks at VC firms. DocSend raises $8M for smarter document sharing.

startup 139

startup disruption pitching VC 139

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

As a courtesy if you enjoyed his write-up please check out his startup company, ChannelStack. In 2008 they raised a much larger fund $132.5 I feel like I know him better personally since he's always in the chat room during the show asking questions). Howard Morgan earned a PhD in Operations Research/Computer Science in 1968.

capital 284

capital board VC pitching 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 22, 2010

This is part of my startup advice series. It’s still important advice for startup founders and something that I’m passionate about. Yes, if you were a startup CEO I would probably cut you some slack. If they are Google, Facebook and then a startup – you’re fine. You’re a startup founder.

advice 392

advice peer-to-peer consulting startup founder 392