Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. She’s a painter and a self-proclaimed Bohemian. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She hasn’t raised any venture capital. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary.

peer-to-peer 363

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs startup entrepreneurship 363

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

University research is a big business for many schools. It certainly worked out pretty well when Stanford licensed the search technology that Larry and Sergei had been working on back to them at Google. They netted more on that deal than Fordham has in it's whole endowment (but still, go Rams!). On top of that, most of a school's major donors are likely to be entrepreneurs in some way.

innovation 296

innovation entrepreneurship incubation education 296

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

Early stage investors have been arguing over this for years. Do they bet on the entrepreneur (jockey) or the business idea and plan (the horse)? This is serious stuff. If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. My answer always varies as I examine each deal, sometimes deferring and passing on an investment because of an uneasy feeling about the ent

incubation 96

incubation VC culture entrepreneurs 96

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2012

Back in October, Techcrunch announced that Dropbox had raised $250mm at a seemingly absurd valuation. Many firms, including my firm Benchmark Capital, participated. When this happened, many people asked us why this was a special company that would cause us to break our standard investment paradigm. They didn’t quite understand why this was a company that deserved [.].

disruption 81

disruption capital investing investment 81

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technology

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

Next Wednesday night, I'm hosting a roundtable discussion between Brooklyn innovation community stakeholders on how to make this side of the river a better place to create, build businesses and grow. There's no specific agenda or goal, other than to bring together all of the people that have an interest in this great community and its ability to incubate cutting edge and creative ideas.

communities 253

communities innovation real estate creativity 253

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 11, 2012

Negotiations. We all think we’re good at them. Most people aren’t that good. For many the idea of negotiations is “let’s split the difference 50/50.” In some situations this is the right answer. In many cases it’s not. I learned many of my negotiation techniques through experience. But I did read a couple of books on the topic that were useful: 1.

strategy 305

strategy VC financing finance 305

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 24, 2012

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen executive summaries of business plans in which the entrepreneur seeks $5,000,000 to build the business. First, few startups can use that much money today with all of the virtual services available and increasingly inexpensive methods of development, prototyping and marketing. Second, almost no professional investor will consider putting that much into a startup until there is proof of market demand, product viability or some other mitigation of failur

investing 72

investing investment consulting creativity 72

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Attached are my thoughts on the Facebook S-1 along with some quick stabs at valuation. Brief disclosure, Benchmark Capital has a minority position in Facebook as a result of the acquisition of FriendFeed, a company that was incubated in our offices. I thought it would be useful to look at Facebook using the scorecard from our [.].

incubation 78

incubation capital venture capital ventures 78

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

In March of 2008, Perry Chen contacted me to ask for my help with fundraising--not the kind of crowd fundraising that he specializes in--but venture capital. It was before Kickstarter got its "e" and it was spelled "Kickstartr." I don't think it had even launched publically at the time. I wasn't at a venture capital firm at the time, but since I had worked for USV and had also raised an angel round myself, a lot of people used to ask me about how to raise money.

VC 294

VC venture capital pitching capital 294

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development

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

I recently wrote a post about negotiating with suppliers called “ The End of the Mexican Road.” The post talked about how to find the lowest acceptable price & terms in a deal through testing. In the post I made clear that I believe that all negotiations should seek to find fair deals where both parties can feel good about the outcomes.

support 293

support advice development startup 293

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

There, I said it. Oh, so you had noticed. Great. then at least we're all starting on the same page and I don't need to explain half the story to you. Don't know who he is, besides that? Well, he's the Knick point guard who dropped 38 on Kobe Bryant the other night. And also Asian, yes. A Harvard grad--all listed 6'2'' of him. So who cares, right? Well, people did care--at least they used to, but not in the right way.

entrepreneurs 287

entrepreneurs pitching startup communities 287

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

When Chantel Waterbury came to pitch me back in August of 2010 for chloe + isabel , she started off the conversation with a simple description--that there were four other companies in her space each doing over a hundred million dollars of revenue and that, in total, they still made up a small percentage of the overall market. She told me a few assumptions about how much each of her merchandizers would sell, and within a couple of minutes I was super psyched about the potential for her business a

pitching 283

pitching startup entrepreneurs opportunity 283

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 6, 2012

An amazing catch setting up a 4th quarter come from behind victory against a team we weren’t supposed to beat. Where have a seen this before? The Giants did it again, winning their fourth title in my lifetime. Now I know how Yankees fans feel—except that this year and in ‘07, these were teams that were counted out before they really got started.

startup 240

startup venture capital technology capital 240

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opportunity

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 3, 2012

From the time we learn to manipulate our parents from the crib to the present day, we learn to negotiate to obtain our wants and needs. As we grow, we negotiate constantly with our parents, then with our peers. As we enter the business world, we negotiate with our bosses and our subordinates. We negotiate with our suppliers, customers, investors, and even our auditors.

peer-to-peer 85

peer-to-peer board entrepreneurs disruption 85

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Since I launched my fund , I've gotten around 50 offers to work with me. For some reason, everyone wants to be a VC. Instead of responding, I decided to sit on them. The way I figure it, how someone approaches me is indicative of how they'd approach an entrepreneur. Since the best entrepreneurs are busy running their business and get pinged by VCs all the time, you're not going to wind up getting a deal if all you do is e-mail once, give up, and walk away.

creativity 312

creativity VC pitching communities 312

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

I love this statement from John Tukey, coiner of the word ‘bit’ to describe a single switch of digital micro-data. Tukey was a statistician, one you would expect to describe events in terms reeking with precision. Instead, Tukey implored us to think in terms of relevancy, cause and comparisons to known events. And all this ethereal talk makes me think of how we investors and entrepreneurs are often led to search for instances in which our plan can be wrong, based upon a past measure.

investing 72

investing investment entrepreneurs 72