Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5 What is a VC fund? VC’s don’t invest 100% of their own money.

VC 269

VC venture capital investing investment 269

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

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. If you are a venture capital investor and you''re not preparing yourself to succeed in a more diverse ecosystem of entrepreneurs, you''re just going to get left behind.

venture capital 380

venture capital VC ventures capital 380

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

There has been little movement in the amount of VC dollars going to women-founded companies since 2012. Though by no means does this mean that women aren’t doing incredible work in the field and it’s only right that women founders receive their fair share of VC investment. Venture capital is far from a level playing field.

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VC startup leadership communities 123

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

I built a 3,000 person tech networking organization in NYC back in 2006 and was one of the first 100 members of the NY Tech Meetup back in 2005 so I’ve participated in a lot of these conversations. In 2005, it was a risky bet to join Union Square Ventures and plant my VC career here in NYC.

communities 430

communities startup real estate mentorship 430

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

VC has been invested over the past decade according to race, gender and educational background makes for grim reading — with all-ethnic teams and female entrepreneurs receiving just a fraction of available funding versus all-white teams and male founders. female entrepreneurs face in accessing VC funding versus male counterparts.

founder 113

founder investing investment VC 113

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

It was 2009 and it was terribly difficult to get any financing (if you can remember a time like that!) and I thought if we brought the community together for common purpose we could create more of a sense of community to help new entrepreneurs get funded, assemble teams, raise profiles and help with biz dev, product, etc.

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accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

Growing too slowly is particularly dangerous in a business with network effects, which the best startups usually have to some degree.” ” This is a frequent theme of mine when asked to speak to audience about the VC industry. And this is fueled by the VC culture in Silicon Valley. It is VC math, like it or not.

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startup VC venture capital culture 390

TechCrunch

MAY 17, 2022

The judges for this pitch-off will be Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator) on day one; and Sven Strohband (Khosla Ventures), Victoria Beasley (Prelude Ventures) and John Du (GM Ventures) on day two. ” Mar Hershenson — Pear VC. ” Expert panel of judges. .”

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pitching energy startup consulting 76

TechCrunch

AUGUST 11, 2021

By comparison, the top quartile of global VC and private equity funds launched around the same time have a TVPI of 2.4x, according to data from Cambridge Associates. Founded in 2009, AppWorks started its accelerator program before launching a $11 million debut fund in 2012. for the other funds. Want to double your rate of return?

startup 98

startup accelerator venture capital creativity 98

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

It’s a critical appointment — while brief — that can have a lasting impact on the founders who win, as well as help maintain TechCrunch’s reputation as an outlet that finds innovative tech and entrepreneurs behind it. Lanzone has a long history in media and as an entrepreneur.

startup 74

startup board venture capital VC 74

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

Now that he’s become a VC he’s promising me he’ll provide way more public information and discourse so please welcome him by following him on Twitter and better yet welcoming him with a Tweet of your own linking to his Twitter handle or this post. The idea immediately resonated. I stayed close. And he followed through.

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ventures investing investment board 340

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

In the early spring of 2009, the fundraising nuclear winter of the previous year hadn't yet thawed. Many of you entrepreneurs know that feeling. Back when I was pitching my previous startup to investors, it had never really dawned on me that they had experienced what I was going through--and that a VC firm was essentially a startup.

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ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

We held a 90-minute demo session where 150 of LA’s VC’s and senior technology executives watched the LPLA V2 group present in small groups of 12-15 each. The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to.

startup 276

startup VC media networking 276

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. PHONE CALLS. Not so fast.

SaaS 339

SaaS VC real estate board 339

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

I invested in LA-based Gogii , one of the fastest growing, most exciting mobile social networking companies you’ve never heard of and maker of a product called textPlus. Gogii came in my office in 2009 with three of the most talented founders I had seen. This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. I can do that.

investing 310

investing investment VC board 310

TechCrunch

APRIL 13, 2022

An online day will follow on May 20 to give our audience, including those who were unable to attend, a chance to tune in online and catch highlights from the live event, network and watch the full sessions. with Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator). Founders – apply here.

micromobility 82

micromobility transportation pitching collaboration 82

TechCrunch

APRIL 12, 2022

An online day will follow on May 20 to give our audience, including those who were unable to attend, a chance to tune in online and catch highlights from the live event, network and watch the full sessions. with Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator). Founders – apply here.

micromobility 78

micromobility transportation pitching collaboration 78

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2011

Ironically enough, the second nudge she gave my career also had to do with AOL--ten years later when in 2009, she introduced me to Jon Brod who was forming AOL Ventures. Does that make it a viable strategy for every new entrepreneur? My first article for the monthly edition was on AOL. Are there examples of that? Not in the slightest.

data analysis 281

data analysis venture capital communities strategy 281

TechCrunch

APRIL 15, 2022

An online day will follow on May 20 to give our audience, including those who were unable to attend, a chance to tune in online and catch highlights from the live event, network and watch the full sessions. with Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator). Founders – apply here.

micromobility 71

micromobility transportation pitching collaboration 71

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. In most cases if you can’t get a prototype done you’re probably not an entrepreneur. Professional angels / former entrepreneurs / seed funds – In Silicon Valley there are people like Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Mike Maples and many more. That’s OK.

advice 291

advice VC pitching angel investing 291

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

My mom was an entrepreneur – she was kind of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. And my specialty was computer networks. So I joined this group called Network Solutions, we did computer networking, the predecessor to the internet. Then everyone just started calling me a serial entrepreneur. It was all technical.

startup 337

startup entrepreneurs consulting board 337

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 21, 2011

When I first got into VC I decided I better have some investment themes. My macro theme was “great entrepreneurs&# who mapped to my belief system about the kind of entrepreneurs I wanted to work with. 2) Harris Interactive IMShopping Poll (August 2009). (3) “People still want calls …&#. 1) eMarketer. (2)

media 329

media disruption VC construction 329

David Teten VC

JANUARY 12, 2022

For example, activist hedge funds, and most private equity and VC funds. A private equity/VC investor can proactively recruit new team members, win clients, or if necessary change management. . In addition, if an investor impacts the operations of a company, they are playing a positive-sum game. Photo credit: JD Hancock.

disruption 52

disruption peer-to-peer strategy venture capital 52

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 16, 2024

When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns. We did this because we believe as former entrepreneurs that your investors really matter.

venture capital 144

venture capital networking health VC 144

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding.

VC 285

VC financing finance advice 285

TechCrunch

APRIL 17, 2023

TechCrunch hosts Darrell Etherington and Becca Szkutak will interview serial-founder-turned-VC Russ Wilcox. Wilcox founded E Ink, which commercialized electronic paper displays and was acquired by Amazon in 2009. Currently he’s a partner at Pillar VC. Don’t miss the closing reception.

real estate 80

real estate incubation VC construction 80

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Just two years later, in 2009, we worked out a deal to create the Techstars Seattle program, with our first program running in 2010. It would also have required more patience from the owners of the network itself, but would have been much more likely to serve their long-term goal of massive value creation over time.

startup ecosystem 195

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 195

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

A great recent example of this was a successful group of entrepreneurs who had created a company that will do $10-12 million in revenue at their system integration business (read: services business) in 2011 after having done $5 million or so in 2010 and $2-3 million in 2009. Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC?

VC 332

VC advice financing finance 332

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

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

On the other hand were everybody else including those that tried to make a full time of it like Robert Scoble as well as those that did it as a side job like VCs, CEO’s and start-up entrepreneurs. Bill Gurley , a well known VC from Benchmark Capital, seemed to have a 2-year hiatus from blogging and has now picked up the pace.

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VC creativity networking media 219

Unvalidated Learnings

JUNE 8, 2017

Network effects win: the revolutionary power of free While the MP3 was genuinely better than the competing MP2, it was not as good as the AAC, which was designed to be its successor. Consumer adoption created a de facto standard that was then impossible to bypass due to network effects. But you didn’t need any of that stuff anymore.

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incumbents disruption frameworks innovation 40

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I thought about things I never had to as an entrepreneur: check size, ownership percentage, deal stage, portfolio construction and risk. But I guess you could say the same about VC.

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VC disruption entrepreneurs venture capital 305

Gust

DECEMBER 7, 2011

There seem to be two motivations behind the current buoyant enthusiasm in Congress over crowd funding for entrepreneurs: 1) the democratization of funding for startup companies (no longer requiring such investors be wealthy) and 2) the job creation that is expected to result from creating more startup ventures.

sustainability 98

sustainability networking VC entrepreneurs 98

StartupNation

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Michigan is now the state with the highest growth in VC investment. They were founded in 2020 and have solid VC backing, recently raising $2 million, raising their total funding to $4.4 Formerly PrivacyCheck, Hush is a VC-backed digital privacy startup founded by Detroit boomerang Mykolas Rambus. Apply now to Rivet.

startup 108

startup real estate health energy 108

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2016

Your customers are all on this product so not trying to grok this platform gives you a few big handicaps: Some VCs on on Snapchat and interacting with them daily on Snapchat and you’re not. That’s like you saying you don’t want to go to cocktail parties and network anymore while every 25-35 year-old VC steals your customers.

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peer-to-peer media VC networking 279

abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Our firm has had the good fortune to invest in many two-sided networks that used information aggregation, supplier aggregation, and user generated content to attract and inform consumers and resultantly disrupt and change different industries. Ezra Klein : Hello and welcome to the Ezra Klein Show, a podcast on Vox Media Podcast Network.

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health VC hospitality disruption 43