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.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

If you haven’t yet heard about Female Founder Office Hours it is an initiative you should be aware of whether you’re male, female or any other gender identify. For the LA event, for example, they will not only have a selection of great LA VCs but also 10+ senior VC women from the SF Bay Area will be coming down for it.

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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. The rest of this post series deals with the reasons why VC froze up in the first place, why investments have heated up recently and why the future of VC funding at the current pace is not certain.

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MAY 24, 2021

The culture is driven by the 20-something irreverent founder with huge technical chops who in a “David vs. Goliath” mythology take on the titans of industry and wins. But markets have changed and I think investors, founders and experienced executives who want to join later-stage startups can all benefit from playing the long game.

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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). This is astounding and myopic in my view.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). I like technical founders so this wasn’t an issue.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

Not in the “founder friendly” culture of tech anyway. An examination of several high profile stories this past year about female CEO issues lays bare the other reason: It’s not “founder friendly.” It’s male founder friendly. Founders have to reckon with that. Travis should hire her back?? He should have been long gone.

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coworking spaces hospitality culture coworking 545

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

It was especially fun for me because we got the chance to talk about the VC industry and how entrepreneurs should think about the VC industry in addition to discussing deals. Segment Three: “VC Deals Funded this Week”. Segment Four, “VC Discussion – How Should Entrepreneurs Think about ‘Strategic’ Investors?”.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

I will argue that LPs who invest in VC funds will also need to adjust a bit as well. These two trends had a major impact on the computing industry from 2000-2005 but the effects weren’t yet felt by the VC industry. Spawning of Micro VCs. When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 Enter Amazon.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 334

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. We are experiencing a frenetic time. For entrepreneurs there’s too much money sloshing around. Year in, year out.

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advice VC entrepreneurs transportation 398

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.

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disruption VC entrepreneurs finance 308

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 14, 2013

There was no strategic goal to build venture backed startup companies, but yet at least three companies in her community got VC investment last year. Yet, you can''t just hire me to be your local community VC. She started out by simply taking a space and filling it with the kind of people that inspired her. How can they be helped?

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 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 while I prefer a certain naive optimism in founders I can’t see the logic that this extends to angel investors. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

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angel investing investing investment VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

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 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.).

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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.

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startup VC media networking 276

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. I have done 6 VC investments – all within the past 20 months. 5 years ago. . None have exited. That’s normal.

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VC venture capital ventures finance 387

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In 2010, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the founder of AdGrok, wrote, “New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say.” Top founders want to live in a place where employees are serious about working hard. Startup founders always need help.

communities 434

communities startup real estate mentorship 434

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. 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. VCs pitch for money, too.

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ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

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.

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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. And he followed through.

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ventures investing investment board 340

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JULY 26, 2022

2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth. We are proud to announce the close of our 7th early-stage fund with $280 million to invest in seed and early stage founders. In fact, I am still active on two boards where I first invested in 2009.

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ventures startup peer-to-peer venture capital 408

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. VCs were basically ‘out to lunch’ and not making new investments during this time.

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ventures startup capital board 334

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JUNE 1, 2011

But they weren’t there in 2009 when you were up late nights shitting yourself whether you really were smart for pursuing this idea. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I started blogging 2 years ago.

advice 391

advice VC finance financing 391

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.

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education creativity innovation entrepreneurs 282

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MARCH 6, 2011

I was hanging out the other day with my buddy Jody Sherman, founder & CEO of EcoMom. I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs. But it’s not cutting VCs out.

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VC peer-to-peer investment investing 292

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.

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startup VC entrepreneurs investment 285

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 15, 2012

Parker made a huge dent in the web as co-founder of Napster, then built Plaxo up to 20 million users. He spotted Facebook in 2004 and Spotify in 2009. What I do care about is that a person who is long on vision and has a knack for being around big companies early on is now living in New York City.

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startup finance financing venture capital 278

Startup Grind

AUGUST 13, 2018

Who is one of your founders you think we should watch? Nancy Lublin, CEO of Loris.ai, is definitely a founder to watch. Taskrabbit; Nov 2009 What is one question you ask yourself before investing in a company? Is this a founder I want to work with for ten years? What is one piece of advice you’d give every founder?

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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.

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entrepreneurs real estate VC advice 298

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. If you know of a newly minted founder whose network could use some additional investors, please make a suggestion in the comments.

data analysis 298

data analysis venture capital communities entrepreneurs 298

TechCrunch

MARCH 28, 2023

It offers information on loans and grants and is accompanied by a quiz that provides specialized answers for founders regarding their capital needs and wants for expanding their businesses. The Tory Burch Foundation, which was launched in 2009 by fashion designer Tory Burch, has a long history of supporting women entrepreneurs.

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capital founder education startup ecosystem 94

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. I am pleased to announce that we have just raised $7.2B This marks an important milestone for us.

venture capital 144

venture capital networking health VC 144

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

startup 354

startup VC entrepreneurs finance 354

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

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Ximena Aleman is co-founder and chief business development officer at Prometeo , an open banking platform that serves Latin America. Year-in, year-out, the gender gap in venture capital investment continues to be a problem women founders face. VC went to startups with at least one woman on the founder team.

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VC startup leadership communities 123

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2016

Invoca had grown steadily and consistently since 2009 and by 2015 SaaS companies with scale had become hot – trading at a median of 7.3x Investors sat with the founder & CEO, Jason Spievak, and asked him what he wanted to do about the future. We started planning our fund raising as much as 14 months ago.

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SaaS VC board finance 236

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].

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VC advice finance financing 136