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. That is for another post.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 19, 2021

Bay Area-based construction startup TraceAir today announced a $3.5 The raise includes existing investor Metropolis VC, along with new additions Liquid 2 Ventures, GEM Capital, GPS Ventures and Andrew Filev. The pandemic has thrown the construction industry for a loop (along with countless others). million Series A.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I thought about things I never had to as an entrepreneur: check size, ownership percentage, deal stage, portfolio construction and risk. But I guess you could say the same about VC.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know. Thank you. (if

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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. The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” years of her life on this office project journey with me.

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culture VC communities venture capital 339

TechCrunch

MAY 20, 2021

Builders VC led the round, which included participation from Celtic, Newfund and Wish co-founder Danny Zhang. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar Jim Kim of Builders VC, said he first encountered Wu and Jung while they were at Wish. “We trillion-dollar industry.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 13, 2022

The trillion-dollar construction industry is often tarred with the inefficiency brush , accused of failing to move with the times and ignoring digitization in favor of legacy tools. But there is plenty of evidence that things are changing, with countless startups raising large sums of cash to help the construction industry modernize.

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construction real estate startup VC 79

TechCrunch

AUGUST 19, 2021

The seed round is led by Prime Movers Lab and Alpaca VC and features a slew of additional firms, including Dolby Family Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, Towerview Ventures, GFA Venture Partners and Suffolk Construction. The former involves a set of 26 different robotic arm attachments to assist with the construction.

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construction VC ventures technology 99

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Hire admin / office management after you raise a reasonable size VC round. Be careful about board construction. Limit the number of VCs. It will pay huge dividends in avoiding the CEO tied up in admin and allow him / her to focus on bigger picture items. Equally limit the number of management.

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startup consulting construction board 388

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Yet how we conceive buildings, architect them for their uses, and ultimately construct them on a site has changed remarkably little over the past few decades. Housing and building costs continue to rise, and there remains a slow linear process from conception to construction for most projects. Photo via WoHo. million in seed capital.

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construction transportation innovation VC 82

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 5, 2016

Just don't go picking someone who really doesn't compliment you just because it's some kind of VC rule. I've heard a lot of VCs tell founders they need co-founders--and that they wouldn't look at a business at a very early stage without a co-founder. The same holds true for VC funds.

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founder board VC construction 283

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 20, 2011

This is extra frustrating in an era in which all you read about is how frothy the VC / funding market is these days. Obviously the diagnosis can have many route causes: Sometimes it’s a question of a market that is less sexy than the current VC fad. I try to be constructive. He was price signaling without knowing it.

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construction VC advice entrepreneurs 284

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 24, 2021

They had constructed a very specific story about how that company’s features would win out over and above the deal that they missed. For years, he went on to advise other founders about how to generate VC interest, which really could have amounted to, “Be a warm body with a pulse in a sector that firm got shut out of a deal in.”

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

When it comes to construction projects, any type of delay can result in increased costs both for the contractor and their customer. It is also interesting that Tiger Global is a co-lead as it is yet another example of the investment giant backing a construction tech company — a growing area of interest for the firm.

construction 95

construction startup VC capital 95

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 16, 2012

There's nothing personal about this particular area for them and it's unclear what motivates them to keep going--other than the prospect of having a VC validate them. Stories create a construct-a framework to make sure we've accounted for all the parts. I wasn't just watching game and a psychologically satisfying stat being reached.

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Haystack

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

There are countless posts on portfolio construction, or how many investments are ideal in a venture portfolio, and so forth. What I do is that the topic of VC fund portfolio construction is not an easy way to grasp, and is likely even harder to master in practice. I am not qualified to opine on the topic.

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construction VC investing investment 83

TechCrunch

JULY 16, 2021

She left NEA to start her own fund, Construct Capital, that focuses exclusively on early-stage startups, with a portfolio that includes Copia, ChargeLab, Tradeswell and Hadrian. That’s where Construct Capital came in. A former NEA partner and a former Uber exec just closed their $140 million debut VC fund.

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construction disruption startup board 95

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 1, 2023

Understanding TAM is essential for startup success — especially in a down market when VC dollars are harder to come by. That’s why we’re thrilled that Dayna Grayson, the co-founder and general partner at Construct Capital, will join us onstage at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

The perverse nature of raising capital is that “no’s” almost always precede “yeses” because it’s very easy for a VC to tell you that you’re not a good fit without doing any real work to evaluate your company so you hear “no” far before others start doing more work. The best VCs follow up but then so, too, to the best entrepreneurs.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 17, 2011

I talked specifically about it in the context of raising VC / establishing credibility over on the Sales School blog where there’s a video & a transcript. So some quick guides although building a narrative is a very hard thing to teach (at least for me). They’re going t0 publish all 4 parts of my talk.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

The firm has an Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Tel Aviv presence, and now has a $160 million sack of funds to deploy across its focus areas: sustainability and technological innovation in the construction, real estate and manufacturing industries. It especially wants to reduce waste and CO2 emissions.

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sustainability real estate construction VC 99

Red Rocket

MAY 22, 2024

If they give you any constructive feedback or suggest pivots, listen to them, and consider taking those actions, if it will help you raise capital a couple years from now. But when you approach them, instead of raising capital and asking for cash, you are asking them what they are looking for in the limited investments they are making today.

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VC venture capital real estate creativity 110

David Teten VC

MARCH 5, 2021

(co-written with Katherine Boe Heuck , a MBA candidate at MIT Sloan (class of 2022); past intern at Versatile VC ; and a current intern at Metaprop NYC.). We reviewed CB Insights’ global list of “40 of the Best VC Bets of all Time.” For funds with an overall return of 3-5x, which is what VC funds aim for, the overall return was 4.6x

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Stuart is well worth following on Twitter & now that’s he’s a VC he is likely to share his wisdom more freely. I started working with David when I was an entrepreneur and he was an associate with a VC firmed called … wait for it … GRP Partners (now Upfront Ventures)! The stories still to be told?:

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board VC construction opportunity 320

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 24, 2022

2) It lets everyone who isn’t a “Web3 VC” off the hook when it comes to understanding how new protocols are going to change the way we build applications. There are VCs who are completely ignoring the whole space, hoping Web3 turns out to be an imploding bubble. Unfortunately, this does two things.

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construction board VC financing 259

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2011

You can do nearly absolutely anything within one or two years time--as long as you put your mind to it and construct a plan. That leaves them in the infinite loop of not being able to get the job because you don't have experience, but not being able to get any experience, etc, etc. It's a solvable problem.

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venture capital VC construction consulting 324

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 25, 2013

Constructions such as inflatable plastic lounges (photos here and here ), giant see-saws, and art projects involving flame throwers provided entertainment for the 800 to 1500 partygoers that showed up each weekend night. Three companies from the Studiomates community-- Sherpaa , Tinybop , and Editorially --received VC dollars in 2012.

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communities innovation creativity real estate 290

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 31, 2020

In a guest post for Extra Crunch, seed-stage VC Ann Miura-Ko shared some of what she’s learned about “the magic of product-market fit,” which she termed “ the defining quality of an early-stage startup.” Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar Robotics and supply chain.

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construction mix-use education SaaS 128

American Entrepreneurship

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

Early stage climate tech VC firm Anthropocene Ventures also joins Kind Designs’ seed round. Rapidly growing climate and construction tech startup Kind Designs gained the support of entrepreneur Mark Cuban and VC firm Anthropocene Ventures for its $5 million seed round. This has presented a great opportunity to Kind Designs.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 27, 2021

In 2016, we set out to develop a rigorous methodology for tracking progress on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in venture capital, and to measure and benchmark those data through our biennial VC Human Capital Survey. More firms are prioritizing these constructive conversations, both within their firms and publicly with industry peers.

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VC peer-to-peer venture capital strategy 77

Haystack

JANUARY 2, 2020

From what I’ve gathered from LPs and VC mentors, in previous eras, the initial deployment period of a VC fund (not including reserves for follow-ons, etc.) A topic that’s been on my mind a lot in 2019 is “time diversity” in venture capital funds. used to be around 5 years. I know of one.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 1, 2022

While your odds of creating a perfect pitch deck that captures coveted VC interest aren’t quite that dire, they’re not exactly in your favor, either. The road to a perfect pitch deck is paved with countless revisions, and a source of constructive, expert feedback can be invaluable. A pitch deck has but one job: get the meeting.

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pitching VC construction venture capital 89

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Choosing the right VC is one of the most important decisions startup founders will make. When times are bad, it’s even more likely that the wrong VC partner could be the catalyst that starts a downward spiral. In good times, the choice can make or break a startup.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 11, 2022

Seed investors Alpaca VC, Dolby Family Ventures, Timber Grove Ventures and Gaingels all invested above their pro-rata and are joined by Signia Venture Partners. housing market. In particular, the investor gets excited about startups re-inventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agtech.

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construction mix-use transportation energy 98

Dream It

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

However, Amit says, “VCs aren’t going to build your business, you’re going to build your business.” When a VC signs onboard to help you with your company, do not expect or look for them to do the bulk of the work for you. Instead, when considering different VCs, look for ones that will cause you to think differently.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Rachel Holt, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital. “You have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings,” says Alex. .” Here’s who she interviewed: Clara Brenner, co-founder and managing partner, Urban Innovation Fund. Dave Clark, partner, Expa.

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SaaS VC transportation pitching 73

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 11, 2014

Is it better to raise your startup’s seed round from only angel investors, or is it better to include a VC or two? For example, VCs may invest larger sums than angel investors. The imprimatur of a VC’s investment in a company might help convince potential customers and recruits. The typical seed round with VCs has 1.6

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