Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. So Tracy began keeping a blog about … (what else?)

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

I wrote a blog post about being hands on where I argued that startup founders need to be hands-on or in my words, “you can’t run a burger chain if you’ve never flipped burgers.&#. I once had a startup team pitch me for an investment where the President of the company led the first call with me on his own.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. As a startup founder you rarely have much money in your bank accounts. I recently had coffee with a young friend who just finished his first startup. And I’m happy as a VC. And why I woke up at 4.50am.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Jonathan Strauss took this issue head on in a blog post that I believe every startup founder should read on “ Replacing Oneself as CEO.” I know because I marked the occasion with a blog post on how to have a great VC meeting. The financial pressures of running a startup started to hit Jonathan.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

When I first read Paul Graham’s blog post on “High Resolution&# Financing I read it as a treatise arguing that convertible notes are better than equity. Most early-stage entrepreneurs who have worked with me (either as an angel or as a seed VC) know that I don’t rely at all on the social proof of other investors.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah. And there you have it. Not a chance.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

If you want to be the marketing person or you want to be perceived as a businessperson or a VC or technical person or whatever you want to be perceived, people will always define you. And what I mean is, I told this story in a blog post I wrote called, “ Is It Time to Earn or Is It Time to Learn ?”

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2011

A few weeks ago I was reading a blog post by MG Siegler that really struck a chord. VC Pitches. Having been an entrepreneur for near-on a decade and having pitched in 100 VC meetings I hated getting no feedback. I always believed that the job of a startup founder is to be Respected, Not Loved. That’s OK.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2013

Anyway, as I winnowed my way through the comments section of my blog post on relationships I realized my own wife has posted a response! My husband is Mark Suster and before he was a VC and blogger he was a startup entrepreneur like you. Many startup founders spend all day making tons of hard decisions both big and minute.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

On my blog I’ve been hesitant to take the topic head on. But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? In it she observes that only 3% of the comments on this blog are from women. Please watch this.

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Y Combinator

MARCH 30, 2021

Last year, during Y Combinator’s Future Founders Conference , a16z’s Sonal Chokshi led a conversation on “Leveling the Playing Field” with Anu Hariharan, YC Continuity Partner. Frankly, we’re still thinking about Anu’s incredible advice for women founders. The third trait founders need is resourcefulness.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I was meeting with a first-time CEO of a very promising young startup recently and offering my advice on what his priorities should be. I gave him the same advice I give nearly all over-worked, control-freak, do-everything-yourself startup founders: “Your number one priority isn’t any of these things.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2011

So for anybody who reads my “This Week in VC&# transcripts but doesn’t watch the video – this one’s for you! I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# If you do decide to go down the 50/50 route, please at least consider: Make sure you have founder vesting for both of you. I am one of them.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

So the startup work moves to where the startup founders live and not vice versa. I’ve blogged about this before and provide a lot more details in these posts: 1. The Foundations of the Seattle startup community. The Components of any Great startup community.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 30, 2016

By now if you follow me on Twitter you probably know that I do near daily “Snapstorms” or a collection of short videos (usually < 5 mins in total) with entrepreneur advice on Snapchat. If I blog on a stand-alone platform I have to work to get distribution. As a VC if you don’t do this you’ll soon become irrelevant.

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