Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

I recently got an email from a friend who had been approached by a well known VC. “Hi [entrepreneur], I hope all is well. I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company]. I know the firm well and I know the entrepreneur & his business well. He’s on a fishing trip.

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Founder Bounty

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Having been in touch with top tier VC's for pre seed and seed these are the best ones. YC Y Combinator is easily one of the most famous accelerators in the world, thanks to its huge profile and excellent reputation among startups. They don’t charge a fee, and offer living expenses.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There’s a quick litmus-test conversation any early-stage VC will have with the founder and it’s one that you should be as prepared for as your elevator pitch. It goes something like this … VC: “How much money are you raising?” Founder: “$8–10 million” VC: “What’s your current burn rate?” A VC is looking for reasonableness.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever get I’m about to offer you some fund-raising advice that flies directly in the face of what most conventional wisdom will tell you. So what does a VC do when he or she isn’t ready to say “no” or perhaps might like to talk with you in a year but not now? It doesn’t.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

But not everybody has the right skills to build a highly successful and valuable startup from scratch. For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.”

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TechCrunch

MARCH 6, 2023

Serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Vinod Khosla has some strong, contrarian advice for the venture capital industry: don’t sit on your founders’ boards. The reality, added Khosla, is that “most board members today in startups have not earned the right to advise” because many have not themselves built startups.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

One of the hardest things about the fund-raising process for entrepreneurs is that you’re trying to raise money from people who have “asymmetric information.” VC firms see thousands of deals and have a refined sense of how the market is valuing deals because they get price signals across all of these deals. So why does a VC ask you?

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2015

In November of 2013 Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures coined the term “ Unicorn Club ” as it relates to billion-dollar startup companies. So here’s advice I give people all the time when they’re raising money. Many entrepreneurs pitching err on the side of too much information. Show me your unicorn.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Italy’s ecosystem for tech venture capital and startups has been in development for years and has made decent strides in the last decade. Put off by high taxes and paperwork in their home country, many Italian entrepreneurs moved to places like London in years past to startup. The good news: VC funding in Italy has grown.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Picking a VC is hard. So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Most VCs are book smart. VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. You want a VC who will spar with you but then STFU and let you get on with things.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

As a VC and former entrepreneur let me offer you some advice. Remember that the goal of an email to a VC or an introduction from a trusted mutual connection is simply to get you the meeting. The VC will smile, thank you, and later pass. This is part of a series on how to improve your fund raising game.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

This is part of a series of advice for founders who need to raise money from venture capitalists. The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. Same with VC. If in high school you got a 3.6

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2018

If you’re an entrepreneur who would like to see this clause in more startups please ask your VC to include it in future term sheets and link to it from their home page. “We Many of us had experiences of asking entrepreneurs, “Why are none of our candidates women?” Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion. It takes a village.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. I had just left Salesforce.com where I was VP, Products, after they had acquired my second startup. VC is a long-term business Some businesses are overnight successes but few of them really move immediately up and to the right. Over the past 2.5

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Startup Grind

AUGUST 15, 2018

He has worked with several startups, invested in companies like Mayvenn, Gimlet Media, Blavity, Airspace Technologies, Codeverse, and many others Pitch your startup for a chance to meet with Cross Culture VC Q&A: What is your / your fund's mission? What is one piece of advice you’d give every founder?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? If you’ve taken the roller coaster ride that is a startup – you know what I’m talking about. I’m enjoying being a VC. On Being an Entrepreneur. The obvious answer is yes.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 16, 2021

Juan Carlos Hernández is the executive director at parallel18 , a top-level, performance-driven international startup program with a social mission, part of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust. Startup markets around the world are heating up, and more investors are competing against each other for the best deals.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2013

I spent countless hours with VC firms, startups & LPs (the people who invest in VC firms). On my first real day back the first thought I have is that most entrepreneurs don’t manage their VC relationships as well as they could. It’s best to think of your VC partnership as a customer.

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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. She actually IS the prototypical entrepreneur. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? There was no money train.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. I’m not a doomsday guy, but just believe that we won’t see a V shaped recovery, which could make VC funding more difficult for tech start-ups (don’t shoot the messenger!).

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2015

I’m so tired of seeing young entrepreneurs get screwed by their angel investors on convertible notes and I know I can’t convince you not to do it so I’d like to offer one simple bit of advice to help you avoid getting screwed (at least on one part of your note). It’s the silent screwing that stings.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

Of course these are great places to network with other investors, meet great entrepreneurs and keep your connections strong with senior execs at larger companies like Yahoo!, I know I can’t be in every deal and I know that the easy part of being a VC is writing the first check in a deal. And there’s conferences. Web Summit.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

MAY 23, 2022

You’ll receive the best practical startup advice straight to your inbox every week. How to survive the startup funding downturn DC Palter a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has already lived through 4 major downturns. But what does it mean for startup funding, and how do startups survive the money-drought?

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 6, 2021

Assembling a startup team is harder than assembling 10 IKEA dressers, and the stakes are much, much higher. Starting with the assumption that 90% of startups will fail and the most successful ones take an average of six years to IPO, founders must make careful decisions about whom they invite to join the core team. His initial advice?

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

AUGUST 2, 2021

What can we do to attract more women investors, and to change the types of startups, products, and services that are funded? Photo Credit: Fortune Adding to the lack of female representation in the industry, research also shows that only 8% of the investment professionals at the top 25 VC firms are women. higher fund returns and see 9.7%

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?&# I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now. I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# At least for the best entrepreneurs. That’s true.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

I’m not anti VC. But there are a lot of things that become norms in the VC industry that always drove me crazy from entrepreneur’s side of the table. One of them is when VCs say, “I’d like to ‘noodle’ on that for a while.&#. I’d love it if VCs gave more honest and direct feedback.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

And I am often approached by entrepreneurs in cities which don’t have a vibrant VC community. If you don’t live in a major VC zone, I have some tips for how to make it easier to raise Venture Capital. It’s a goal to help you understand the life of a VC. I travel the country a lot. Ask SuperCell.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

You’re tied at the hip to your VC. So my first advice is not to rush in the fund raising process. Get to know VCs over a long period of time so that when you’re ready to get engaged you feel you know their character. Good recruiters never stop at the official list and neither do VCs. Don’t stop there.

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This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 8, 2011

Any success as an entrepreneur? How about as a VC? He hasn't founded or built either a successful, let alone innovative company, and he hasn't raised $ to invest in those entrepreneurs. Fred has basically always been a VC, Mike was a reporter, and Jim worked in product marketing and management consulting.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 18, 2023

It seems like it’s the best of times for founders thinking about launching an AI startup, especially with OpenAI releasing ChatGPT to the masses, as it has the potential to really put AI front and center in business and perhaps everything we do technologically.

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StartupNation

JUNE 1, 2021

Oftentimes, I read articles offering tips for entrepreneurs that revolve around generic advice on getting started. The investment platform I founded and run, VenturePole, is the investment partner of HealthInc, the health tech accelerator of Startupbootcamp, the biggest startup accelerator organization in Europe. Keep it short.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

This is part of my Startup Advice series. In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.&# ) I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done. Good entrepreneurs can admit when their course of action was wrong and learn from it.

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AsiaTechDaily

MARCH 28, 2023

Register Startup founders are often too focused on the amount of money they can get from an investor that they mostly fail to see the value that other investors have to offer to grow their businesses further. Indelible Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in B2B SaaS startups that can scale internationally.

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