A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Our interest in web3 which started back in 2011 was also grounded in the idea that new forms of funding are necessary to finance innovation and creative work. Serial entrepreneur @G0rd0n_ is looking to scale blue ocean and marine biodiversity markets using #web3 and #DeSci.

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financing finance creativity innovation 228

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.

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VC venture capital investing investment 269

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Hollywood powerhouse, comedian and entrepreneur Kevin Hart makes the world laugh both onstage and on camera. But behind the scenes, he’s a serious entrepreneur building a multiplatform media empire. He is also the founder and managing partner of HartBeat Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with a focus on lifestyle, media and technology.

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disruption incubation media VC 89

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. Kara will now be really involved with what goes on to successfully create and run a firm but while still handling her core duties of funding great entrepreneurs. I promise you, he really said this out loud.) I’m only 52!

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ventures leadership mentorship venture capital 361

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

HubStop introduced usage-based pricing in 2011 to boost its retention rate, then near 70%. “You have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings,” says Alex. .” A fraction of Robinhood’s users are driving its runaway growth. and Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co.

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SaaS VC transportation pitching 73

TechCrunch

MAY 24, 2021

Long before SoftBank launched its $2 billion Innovation Fund in Latin America, and before Andreessen Horowitz began actively investing in the region , Sao Paulo-based Kaszek has been putting money into promising startups since 2011, helping spawn nine unicorns along the way.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 13, 2021

Business writer Gordon Pitts pinpoints 2011 as the game-changing year for the Atlantic startup scene. In his book “Unicorn in the Woods: How East Coast Geeks and Dreamers are Changing the Game , ” Pitts recounts how in March 2011 Salesforce purchased New Brunswick-based social media monitoring company Radian6 for approximately $300 million.

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venture capital capital culture advice 137

TechCrunch

APRIL 3, 2023

The region’s startup scene saw a boom, with a large spike of fundraises in 2021 with VC capital deployed totaling $15.9 Since 2011, Kaszek has backed more than 120 companies, which the firm says collectively have raised more than $15.5 billion in 2021, (up from $2 billion in 2018) according to LAVCA. billion in capital.

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startup opportunity SaaS ventures 94

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). I should say that I agree that naive optimism in entrepreneurs can produce higher beta (upside or flops) and that’s good from an investment standpoint if you’re looking for big returns.

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angel investing investing investment VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

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. By 2011 the market had started to change dramatically. We announced Fund I in 2011. So we went for it.

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accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. In 2011 I started using Instagram. In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch. I went to an industry event where people actually called me self-centered for writing publicly.

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networking advice VC financing 230

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. And while this data is from mid-2011 I can assure you that data is not going down. There are 2.9

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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. . million in seed funding (5.1

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board founder startup incubation 110

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

Toronto, Ontario-based OMERS Ventures is the VC arm of OMERS, the pension plan for Ontario’s municipal employees. Founded in 2011, the firm presently has about $1.6 An Entrepreneur-in-Residence program that would serve as an incubator for founders to prepare them to launch their new software companies. . Barrett said.

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construction ventures startup incubation 81

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

I myself coined the term ENIFA (everyone now is a f **g angel) in 2011 but it didn’t stick as well as the term Unicorn did. One of my favorite entrepreneur-Twitterer weighed in, “You want to keep tapping into their collective intelligence so you keep saying ‘Thank you for the feedback’ and they keep sending it,” Ms.

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startup advice pitching VC 323

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.

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transportation VC networking energy 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Because my role as a VC requires me to take and endless stream of meetings I long ago decided I need to learn as much as I can from the meetings I attend so I often just ask tons of questions and assimilate knowledge. When I think about what defines us as a VC I think: Operationally knowledgeable / strong startup competence.

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VC communities investing investment 360

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). And if I were an entrepreneur I’d rather find investors who understood “my space&# so that in tough times they felt comfortable about “doubling down.&#. Not everybody agreed.

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angel investing investing investment VC 152

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2013

After all, you’d have to be a really big baby to complain about being a VC. first world problems and all] But I did feel like 2012 was particularly tough for me having closed out 2011 losing a close family member and dealing with cancer with both family members and close friends. ” I felt that way exactly.

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creativity VC board entrepreneurs 313

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011. People who comment to me privately about how surprised they are by how rapidly I’ve “built a name for myself in VC&# remind me of this fallacy. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I did that? Oh, Crap.

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advice VC financing finance 391

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

The part of the movement that resonates the most with me (in my words) is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a large market for what they do. This benefits you, the entrepreneur. It takes options off of the table.

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entrepreneurs incubation board VC 374

TechCrunch

APRIL 11, 2022

At the same time, he added, “high interest rates may also increase the demand for venture capital when bank lending is less attractive to entrepreneurs.” The biggest VC firms are managing a lot more moolah than you thought. Since its founding in 2011, the Israeli firm has invested in dozens of companies and had 12 exits.

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venture capital investing investment ventures 97

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Neal Sáles-Griffin: Managing girector of Techstars Chicago and a venture partner for MATH, Neal is an entrepreneur, investor and teacher. In 2011, he co-founded the first beginner-focused, in-person coding bootcamp. He is active in nonprofit and civic engagement across Chicago and in 2018 he ran for mayor. Talk about awesome exposure!

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pitching entrepreneurship advice VC 58

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. 2007, 2011) and for the hottest of companies and in bad markets for fund raising (2003, 2008) prices test the bottom end of the range. I’m a VC so I have an obvious bias.

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startup advice pitching VC 336

TechCrunch

JUNE 10, 2021

In June of last year, Alexis Ohanian announced that he was leaving Initialized Capital , the venture firm he co-founded alongside Garry Tan in 2011. Thus far, the VC firm has made 17 investments. Nearly a year later, he’s announcing that his new venture firm, Seven Seven Six , has raised $150 million for its first fund.

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ventures VC investing investment 91

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

Babak Nivi is one of the most understated, helpful & important people on the entrepreneur / startup scene in NorCal. What he (along with Naval) started with AngelList is also a very important transformation to the communications between first-time entrepreneurs & angels. But it +is+ an anti-entrepreneur stance.&#

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angel investing VC mix-use entrepreneurs 267

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

“When you can’t quite make it to product-market fit, there’s a third choice that too many entrepreneurs, and their investors, overlook: selling out,” says Kittu Kolluri, founder and managing director of Neotribe Ventures. But when Uber rolled out service in San Francisco in 2011, it really transformed the way people got around.

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pitching frameworks transportation ventures 75

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. I believe that.

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real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

Gust

DECEMBER 1, 2011

New Company Formation – According to the Kauffman Foundation, entrepreneurs start about 700,000 companies per year in the US. Dr. Carl Schramm, Kauffman CEO , recently said that startup formation is stagnant or even decreasing in the US in the second half of 2011. It appears to me that there are about 100 Super Angels in the US.

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capital startup angel capital VC 120

Entrepreneur's Handbook

JUNE 14, 2023

The company started in 2011 and built what I still think is the best free learn-to-code product online. Giant Mistakes and Successes: Lessons From Growing Revenue From $10M To $50M was originally published in Entrepreneur's Handbook on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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SaaS media consulting advice 81

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 18, 2020

According to the entrepreneurs and investors reporter Natasha Mascarenhas spoke to, this deal “shows the strength of edtech’s capital options as the pandemic continues.” Founders and the VCs who back them may not be friends, but they’re usually friendly. What’s the risk that the investor will hurt the business?

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financing finance media startup 105

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

It’s what life was like as an entrepreneur. I’ve been on the road much of 2012 and part of 2011. But this is nothing like the stress of being an entrepreneur. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. What’s it really like being an entrepreneur? It’s all too familiar.

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entrepreneurs VC founder venture capital 122

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”) repeating the same mantra. I have had this discussion with many a first-time entrepreneur. It allows you many more exit opportunities.

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startup VC networking venture capital 418

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.

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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.

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venture capital networking health VC 145

For Entrepreneurs

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

How to make sure your sales forecast has been properly validated so it will stand up to test of time (and investor scrutiny).

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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?

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VC advice financing finance 332