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). first vertical to launch by 2010 Holiday Season.

VC 225

VC social gaming venture capital networking 225

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

If you want to understand the software trend that drove the creation of the seed-stage VC phenomenon I wrote about it that linked blog post but in short: cloud computing drove down the cost to create startups enabling a new category of investor. Some quick highlights include: The Role of a Seed Stage VC. Startup Lessons'

VC 348

VC peer-to-peer frameworks board 348

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

They do around 7% of the total VC-backed deals in the US per year or just under 40 deals / year on average (present year excluded!). Where I add commentary from myself or my fellow VC colleagues from our discussion after Jamie left I’ll put in red. Nearly 50% say they will increase their activity levels in 2010 (hallelujah!)

VC 241

VC venture capital ventures capital 241

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. The following was available: “I kept hearing about startups that raised VC funding, but which hadn’t filed Form Ds (nor issued a press release).

VC 285

VC financing finance capital 285

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. Other Deals.

VC 217

VC capital venture capital networking 217

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

But I guess you could say the same about VC. Stock market declines would bring back dog days of VC. If you want a comprehensive summary of the industry in this era it’s worth a read: VC Ice Age Part 1 – What Happens When a Market Comes to a Standstill? VC Ice Age Part 2 – Why the Market Started Moving Again?

VC 305

VC disruption entrepreneurs venture capital 305

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists against the VC industry. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel-good startups. It’s hard to say.

angel investing 284

angel investing investing investment VC 284

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 5, 2021

There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. I have heard that for as long as I have been in VC and probably have written it here a few times. As you can see, investing in VC funds can be very profitable.

VC 279

VC board investing investment 279

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”. 14mm in Series C; $25mm in Series B raised in March 2010; $44mm raised in total. LivingSocial.

VC 236

VC venture capital ventures support 236

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2012

I met him in April of 2010--almost two years before he got a venture round. Actually, I wouldn't even really call them passes, because in a couple instances, they were just conversations--"Pre Deck" if you will. Devrim Yasar just raised an additional $7.25 million for Koding.com. He wasn't even working on this fulltime.

VC 250

VC education entrepreneurs development 250

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. In particular I tried to do most of the “entrepreneur advice on VC” up front so that if you don’t want to watch our views on the deals you don’t have to. OTHER DEALS: 1.

VC 214

VC founder advice ventures 214

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. To really assess what opportunities the VC industry has over the next decade, one needs to first look at some of the root causes of poor returns in the past decade. The number of venture capital funds has shrunk by two-thirds.

venture capital 347

venture capital capital ventures VC 347

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

In 2010 somebody posed the question on Quora, “Is Mark Suster a Successful Venture Capitalist?” Helping companies get to next financing round successfully: I was just beginning this phase in Sept 2010 and said so. This is what I wrote on that Quora answer from Sept 2010. Lemons ripen early, great companies take time.”

VC 387

VC venture capital ventures financing 387

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. It’s just not a VC investment.

disruption 308

disruption VC entrepreneurs finance 308

Haystack

JANUARY 18, 2020

Having spent time around and then in the world of VC in the Bay Area during the last decade, I’ve been reflecting on how different norms in the industry have changed. At the start of 2010, there was some unwritten VC industry conventions that have been tested, challenged, and upended in the last decade.

VC 130

VC construction strategy investing 130

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. My own track record as a VC across First Round Capital and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures actually starts in January of 2010, *after* the Airbnb class of Winter 2009.

venture capital 398

venture capital VC ventures capital 398

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. Between 1999–2005 the costs went down by 90% and between 2005–2010 they went down a further 90%.

investing 328

investing investment VC venture capital 328

Gust

DECEMBER 13, 2011

For VCs, I chose to look at all seed stage VC deals (from MoneyTree©) as well as those in five of the most active regions in the country. Here are the trends in venture capital financings from 2006 through 2010 – the number of seed stage deals funded and total investment by region in millions of dollars. . All Seed-VC.

entrepreneurs 162

entrepreneurs angel investing VC venture capital 162

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 28, 2022

So I saw this tweet by Semil Shah yesterday: A friend who works in an industry far from tech startups & VC asked what would be the single article I’d share to read on each topic. So I clicked on the link to my Competing To Win Deals post, which I wrote in 2010, and read it. That is a failure of the system.

VC 261

VC entrepreneurs venture capital strategy 261

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 27, 2021

Our first Opportunity Fund, raised two years later in 2010, has generated only 3.9x That explains why our 2010 Opportunity Fund has a lower cash on cash return but a much higher IRR than our 2008 early-stage fund. Our 2014 Opportunity Fund has a higher cash on cash return but a lower IRR than our 2010 Opportunity Fund.

opportunity 279

opportunity venture capital strategy investing 279

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

We haven’t hit that wall yet for three reasons: 1) not enough elapsed time, 2) the VC market is frenzied now, too and 3) we haven’t seen a market downturn since the volume picked up. But I’ll judge the angel class of 2009/2010 on a 7-10 year time horizon. I was very active in 2009 / early 2010.

angel investing 299

angel investing investing investment real estate 299

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 17, 2014

In 2010, I funded his company, Backupify , which has gone on to raise over $19 million in funding and is set to have their best year of revenue to date. The best spend of sponsorship money I''ve ever seen might be the $50 in balls and chalk that Dennis probably spent building the Foursquare court that beat Gowalla in 2010.

communities 298

communities VC accelerator startup 298

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2011

Will you get the TechCrunch bump, the tier-1 VC anointment, followed by great PR firm support and then the NY Times or WSJ story that follows? So as I get around the country speaking at college campus in 2010 & 2011 I have been preaching the same theme. Not every problem has to be a huge VC-fundable business.

transportation 309

transportation VC networking energy 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. But as LA as a tech community grew massively the percentage of our LA deals went from 15% to 50% from 1996 to 2010 and it has remained solid since then.

culture 339

culture VC communities venture capital 339

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I don’t believe that search is the only answer in 2010 as it was in 2000. I found this investment strange since normally VC’s hate to bet on gaming companies. In my mind, not a typical VC investment. In the interview we also covered: - How are VC funds structured: closed-funds vs. evergreen funds? OTHER STUFF.

venture capital 271

venture capital capital ventures VC 271

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

When Chantel asked investors for $3mm for her seed round back in 2010, people stood up and took notice. So if you're a super early stage with just a prototype, you might not think that a VC fund is the right fit for you--so you wind up at an angel group. VCs don't go later and angels don't go earlier. Venture investing is hard.

advice 418

advice founder pitching VC 418

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

This was the first episode where Jason wasn’t on the show, which gave me the chance to have another VC on the show to discuss deals. Rustic Canyon is an LA-based, but geography-agnostic VC that is currently investing from a $200 million fund. VC Financings: 1. I keep meaning to get him drunk to spill the stories.

venture capital 270

venture capital capital ventures VC 270

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists agains the industry. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel good startups. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

angel investing 152

angel investing investing investment VC 152

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. And he followed through. So he had had a taste of it.

ventures 340

ventures investing investment board 340

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Yet the truth is that I see angels with great deal flow & great instincts whom I believe will only perform well in times that favor angel investors (like 2010) where there are early exits. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry. I don’t believe these times will last. Part three will be published shortly.

angel investing 288

angel investing investing investment advice 288

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is @launchpadlad. When I kicked off Launchpad LA a year ago I had a few objectives: Create an ecosystem where all Southern California VC’s had the chance to work together more actively outside of the boards on which we mutually sit.

mentorship 259

mentorship VC education entrepreneurs 259

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This led Roy Rodenstein (whose company Going.com was sold to AOL ) and others to discuss , what happens when VC’s need to invest across multiple funds. And VC’s don’t like to invest across multiple funds. A totally new VC is willing to invest in the company but at a $15 million pre-money valuation.

investing 226

investing investment VC venture capital 226

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.” In 2005, it was a risky bet to join Union Square Ventures and plant my VC career here in NYC. They’re less impactful on a year to year basis.

communities 434

communities startup real estate mentorship 434

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2015

In part because as a VC I reached the longevity where you see some things fail and have to ask yourself, “would I readily work with that person again? I saw this in 2001-2003 and in 2008-2010. But I’ve been thinking a lot about failure in the past year or so. Why or why not?”

creativity 378

creativity culture entrepreneurs energy 378

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

It all started in 2010 with Klout. From this debate about Klout John and I have had a series of in person meetings and debates about our industry (both VC & tech) and what is changing. 2:00 Why don’t you like the term VC? 7:00 80% of the VC funds last year went to a small handful of funds. SHOW NOTES.

venture capital 303

venture capital VC ventures capital 303

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

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. There are a lot of things I think entrepreneurs should care about when raising from a VC: How big or small their fund is? Beezer did.

entrepreneurs 237

entrepreneurs VC mentorship strategy 237