Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Recently the firms two founding partners (and also Managing Partners) —  Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham  — decided to transition management of the firm to Andy Weissman (who joined in 2012) and Albert Wenger (joined in 2008 and writes one of the most thoughtful blogs in our industry ). Maybe that’s USV, too.

leadership 161

leadership VC venture capital ventures 161

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. Still, as I’ve written in the past, what I love about blogging is the ability to have a public debate where we can all learn. I’m sorry, but that’s dumb.

angel investing 267

angel investing VC mix-use entrepreneurs 267

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 20, 2022

I told him the story of how I bumped into Rikki Tahta walking through the garment district in NYC in the spring of 2011 and Rikki told me he was working on a Bitcoin startup. The same was true with blogging and tweeting a decade earlier. I met Mena Trott at a Nick Denton party in NYC in 2003 and she explained blogging to me.

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investing investment ventures startup 255

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 27, 2021

That was USV’s initial web2 thesis: USV in 140 characters: invest in large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience, and defensible though network effects — Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) June 8, 2011. Chris Dixon called that “come for the tools, stay for the network” in this blog post.

networking 272

networking opportunity investing investment 272

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

I’ve been on the road much of 2012 and part of 2011. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. One of the most asked questions I get about being a VC who was formerly an entrepreneur is if I ever miss being an entrepreneur? And I’m happy as a VC. And so it goes again.

entrepreneurs 122

entrepreneurs VC founder venture capital 122

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Bill Gurley tweeted his blog post from 2011 that “ all revenue is not created equal.” So how you value and how you finance low margin businesses becomes very important. They can’t be valued too highly or you risk a financing crisis. ” That is a great way of saying what I was trying to say.

finance 142

finance financing VC disruption 142

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

I remember meeting Zach Sims and his co-founder Ryan Bubinski back in 2011 when they started Codecademy. What is more impressive is that when you read this blog post Zach wrote this week you see that he is just getting started. Zach was still in college and thinking of dropping out to focus on the Company. Time does fly.

education 150

education sustainability founder entrepreneurship 150

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 14, 2019

Tumblr was both a blogging platform and a social media application and while I always loved the versatility of the platform, native mobile applications benefit from simplicity, not complexity. There was a time around 2010 and 2011 when Tumblr was the most engaging social platform that I was on.

media 201

media investing investment development 201

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 13, 2020

I used this title for possibly the most regrettable blog post I have written on AVC back in 2011. Alex starts off his post with this assertion: 2019 was the year when VCs and startup founders soured on paid acquisition. Back in 2011, I wrote: He said “every company needs a marketing budget.”

startup founder 156

startup founder startup founder entrepreneurship 156

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

I’ve been on the road much of 2012 and part of 2011. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. One of the most asked questions I get about being a VC who was formerly an entrepreneur is if I ever miss being an entrepreneur? And I’m happy as a VC.

entrepreneurs 420

entrepreneurs VC founder venture capital 420

TechCrunch

MARCH 2, 2021

During the onset of the pandemic, Aboyeji, via his blog post , said Future Africa Fund was looking to raise institutional investment. Two years after launching the African entertainment company in 2011, Njoku and his co-founder Bastian Gotter launched SPARK , a self-described company builder and a $2 million fund.

founder 144

founder finance financing investing 144

TechCrunch

JANUARY 27, 2023

In 2011 , as Twitter hit the 100 million active users mark, the entrepreneur left to pursue new projects with Obvious Corporation , a startup incubator and investment vehicle that had included fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and former Twitter exec Jason Goldman. The venture most notably incubated the blogging platform Medium.

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board founder startup incubation 110

Haystack

DECEMBER 30, 2019

But then I talked to a mentor who reminded me this blog usually was and should still be a medium for me to think out loud, and that this act of constantly thinking should be valuable to at least me. It’s been a nearly 10-year slog since I moved back to the Bay Area in 2011 and meandered my way into the world of venture capital.

venture capital 115

venture capital VC capital technology 115

TechCrunch

MARCH 15, 2021

Up until this point, Gumroad has raised more than $8 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins, First Round, Max Levchin and SV Angel, as well as others, since 2011. You can imagine influencers and sherpas with an audience replacing the concept of a VC fund. So far, Gumroad has raised $3.4

venture capital 112

venture capital VC capital finance 112

Hunter Walk

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

Endless anti-union tantrums, delivered with the confidence that only a VC who had a single personal interaction with a union 7 years ago could muster. LLH: When starting Belly in 2011, yeah, we were tracking something like 15 companies in the Loyalty space. I’ve heard many fast and hard passes. then a passing reference to Jimmy Hoffa.

venture capital 93

venture capital ventures capital mix-use 93

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 finance financing 332

Haystack

APRIL 10, 2018

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. As I argued at the start of the year, there are no longer any rules about what constitutes seed and who can play in the game.

investment 60

investment investing financing finance 60

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 5, 2015

In 2010, Foursquare hit it big in Austin not long after their funding, which I accidently kicked off with a blog post. In 2011, GroupMe seemed to be the winner. You know the only answer VC''s should feel qualified to give on this one? I might even say that the Meerkat funding is peak VC for this cycle. sad trombone ].

VC 301

VC venture capital technology networking 301

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 27, 2021

I am returning to a topic that I have talked a lot about on this blog. Derek Rose was the first pick in the 2008 draft and by 2011 he became the youngest NBA player to win the Most Valuable Player award, something he accomplished at age 23. It was grit. A year later he tore his ACL and he has struggled with injuries ever since.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

A year ago I blogged about one of my most common mantras that applies to sales, biz dev & fund raising alike: “ Time is the Enemy of all Deals.&#. The market is over-valued in 2011 relative to norms. It doesn’t feel like that in February 2011. Sometimes this pays off, other times it doesn’t.

advice 303

advice frameworks capital mentorship 303

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 6, 2020

and moved away from the Disqus comment system, I heard loudly and clearly that the folks who have left comments here at AVC, via Disqus, from 2007 to early 2020, would like to have their comments displayed at the bottom of all of those old blog posts. Back when we launched the new AVC (AVC 3.0)

development 148

development communities 148

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2013

I miss blogging because it serves as a great repository for me of my current thinking, as a way of organizing my thoughts and clarifying what I think and as a conversation started with so many of you (as Hunter Walk elegantly said, “Blog not to show how smart you are, but in the hope of soliciting feedback from smart people.

creativity 313

creativity VC board entrepreneurs 313

TechCrunch

MARCH 13, 2021

During his free time, he started a blog to tell his friends back home about his life out west, and also to recommend TV shows. Slowly, Mike’s Bloggity Blog became one of Canada’s premier entertainment sites, and Morrison found himself with a local newspaper column as well as regular television and radio appearances.

venture capital 137

venture capital capital culture advice 137

Hunter Walk

JUNE 26, 2023

Chris Neumann (of Canada’s Panache Ventures ) checks these boxes so I asked him to come on my blog (currently less consistent, hopefully still the other two) for Five Questions. Chris Neumann: I’ve been lucky to have been a part of 5 startups going back to the late-90s, including two that were VC-backed (DataHero and Aster Data).

founder 111

founder ventures culture advice 111

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. The three largest webmail services had over 1 billion global users at the end of 2011. I suppose I could have skipped the whole rest of the blog post and just posted that. There are 2.9

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